MIT's Negroponte Expects $100 Laptops Next Year | Infoworld | News | 2005-05-16 | by Martyn Williams, IDG News Service 05/16/2005 10:29 AM

MIT's Negroponte expects $100 laptops next year | InfoWorld | News | 2005-05-16 | By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service 05/16/2005 10:29 AM

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MIT's Negroponte expects $100 laptops next year FIND PRODUCTS AND COMPANIES Project aims to provide a laptop for every child SEARCH By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service May 16, 2005 » COMPLETE PRODUCT GUIDE

An ambitious plan by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab to develop and distribute a laptop computer costing no more than $100 is expected to take a major step forward next month with the receipt of the first order. TECHNOLOGY INDEX • Applications Orders from five or six countries, for a • Application Development SPONSOR total of 6 million machines, are hoped • Security White Paper: Simplicity and for before a full pilot project can begin, • Networking Enterprise Search said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of • Wireless

the MIT Media Lab, in an interview in • Platforms Sponsored by Google Tokyo on Monday. The basic aim of the • Hardware project is to provide a laptop for every • Data Management • Storage SPONSOR child, supplied through any country that wants to offer them. • Web Services INFOWORLD IT STRATEGY • Business GUIDE: BUILDING BUSINESS TO • Telecom SCALE Negroponte is in Japan to promote the project at the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network • Professional Services • Standards Sponsored by HP Blades Conference, a sideline conference to the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society, bringing together TECH WATCH delegates from around 80 countries. Sun, Microsoft highlight collaboration Many countries lack the means or ability to realize the full potential of work their children through their current education systems, he said. However, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems officials as Negroponte envisions it, the combination of laptops to all children, marked the first year of their collaboration broadband connections for the towns and villages those children live in pact Friday by unveiling a progress report of their work. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and and a school syllabus for the use of digital materials, will improve not only the education each child receives but their future prospects as Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy, once well. antagonists, good-naturedly ...

Advanced discussions with various governments for pilot projects are already well underway, Negroponte said. China is expected to order Entrepreneur network gathers 3 million machines and Brazil is expected to buy 1 million of the laptops. He's looking for three more nations -- one each in Africa, the What may be tomorrow's hot new companies Middle East, and South East Asia -- to commit to laptops orders, in addition to supplying some to the U.S., before the machine goes into are meeting in Silicon Valley today. The Indus production, hopefully sometime in 2006. Entrepreneurs, or TiE, a networking organization for entrepreneurs, is holding its The standard sales model for laptop computers requires a lot of capital TiEcon 2005 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. this week. The event is ... for distribution, promotion, and profit, but Negroponte is convinced that with a simplified sales model and some reengineering of the device itself, COLUMNISTS the $100 price point can be realized. The "simple" truth about security The machine won't be available in shops. The company, which has the It all sounds so simple. You working title of The $100 Laptop Co., plans to sell laptops in-bulk, save your data to a tape directly to government ministries and isn't looking to make a profit. About cartridge. When you have enough cartridges,... half the price of a current laptop computer is accounted for by marketing, sales, distribution channels and profit, so removing those aspects will provide big cost savings, Negroponte said. » MORE COLUMNISTS MORE INFOWORLD BLOGS The remaining half of the laptop's cost is accounted for by the parts and manufacturing, and Negroponte is planning savings there too. Roughly Chad Dickerson two thirds of this cost is the display panel and associated backlight, but My Mac's biggest usability problem Negroponte's version of the machine will use a projection display system I can't tell you how annoying it is when the that costs a total of about $30, he said. CD eject on my G5 doesn't work. I have nothing in my CD drive -- I'm just ... "The rest of the cost is there to support an absolutely obese, overweight and unreliable operating system. If you get rid of that and start with a Bob Lewis thin, tiny operating system you can do an awful lot," Negroponte said. The value of useless knowledge In response to the discussion I posted The laptop will run Linux, he said. The distribution hasn't been decided upon yet but the project is in serious discussions with Raleigh, yesterday regarding exceptions, rules, and the nature of the word "proves," I ... North Carolina, Red Hat (Profile, Products, Articles) and Beijing's Red Flag Software, Negroponte said.

The first generation machine will be based on a 500MHz processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which is one of the project's main • Chad Dickerson backers, and will have 256MB of main memory, 1GB of flash memory in place of a hard-disk drive and a wireless LAN connection, he • Kevin Railsback said. The machines will automatically connect with others, forming a mesh network to support communications and also Internet • Tom Yager connection sharing and they'll run software including the Skype voice-over-IP application, Negroponte said. • Ed Scannell's SMB Blog • Bob Lewis Plans are already advanced enough to include second and third generation machines, due in 2007 and 2008 respectively, Negroponte • Ed Foster said. A prototype of the third generation machine he demonstrated was a tablet form-factor based on a plastic-film display from E Ink. • Paul Venezia That machine could also use an advanced printing technology to produce the circuit board further cutting down the price, he said. • The Storage Network http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/16/HNmitlaptops_1.html Page 1 of 3 MIT's Negroponte expects $100 laptops next year | InfoWorld | News | 2005-05-16 | By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service 05/16/2005 10:29 AM

That machine could also use an advanced printing technology to produce the circuit board further cutting down the price, he said.

Current plans call for the first 6 million machines to be manufactured in China and then for regional manufacturing centers to be GOVERNMENT IT & POLICY established. Brazil is also interested in building a plant to produce laptops for its market and those in South America, Negroponte said. • Anti-Japanese Hostilities Move to the Internet Additional manufacturing will be needed if the project reaches its eventual goal: production of between 100 million and 200 million laptops • To Infinity and Beyond per year. In comparison the total worldwide PC market in 2004 was 195 million, according to a recent report from IDC. • Critiquing the Press The project is being headed by Negroponte along with two other MIT faculty members: Joe Jacobson, who developed the E Ink technology, and Seymour Papert, who is an expert on child learning. The project's home page is: http://laptop.media.mit.edu .

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