machine-envy

The Trib published a great piece on MIT’s One Laptop Per Child (known as the XO-1) initiative yesterday. It’s a shame they’ve chosen the picture they did for the website, as there are some great ones in the print copy. Plenty available on the internets, though.

New stuff I learnt from this piece:

• IBM and Microsoft are collaborating on a rival low-cost child’s computer, called “The Classmate”, which will come in at “up to” $400
• The first laptops left a factory in Shanghai last week, to be road-tested for final changes.
• The first five countries to order a million laptops will most likely be Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand

Obviously, loads of people are bitching about them already. They’re late. They’re too expensive. They don’t have that cool wind up thing you showed us at WSIS.

“The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk … and with a tiny little screen” says Bill Gate, apparently. Hilarious. Even on this issue the man does FUD. It’s one laptop per child, Bill, ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD. Not worried those five million little blighters might grow up liking Linux, are you?

It’s not just techies having a go - the development community is questioning “whether it is worth spending $100 on a laptop, when so many schools don’t even have enough books.” I got a preview of some of the stuff they’re going to want to ask at an event at the LSE a couple of weeks ago. I’d worry too if a load of Silicon Valley tech evangelists started saying they could solve the problems you’ve been working on your whole life. We’ll just have to see.

But surely you can deliver a whole load more books over wireless than on a dead tree?

UPDATE: A nice gallery of XO-1 pics here.