Competing against the $100 Laptop
The $100 OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project headed by Nicholas Negroponte is having a ripple effect. For instance, it’s a pretty good sign as to how seriously the project is being taken by Microsoft that Bill Gates felt the need to disparage the project and suggest Microsoft is working on alternatives using cell phones.
The newest indication of the impact of this project is that Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off a new $400 laptop they are developing called the Edu-Wise. The announcement was in Brazil (a hotbed of open source software and a partner in the OLPC project), so the only news article online about it right now is from S?o Paulo, and can be viewed in translated form here through Google. It’s projected to be available in 2007. Otellini is quite up front that the device is in direct response to the OLPC project. While it’s still just a proposal, it’s just more proof that access to inexpensive portable computing appropriate to schools is a matter of when, not if. We have to shake off the mindset of computers and expensive being inseparable. Our long-term challenge is not in how to afford computers; it’s how to change education to take full advantage of them.
[Thanks, Engadget!]