Developing nations to test new $150 laptops
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From Brazil to Pakistan, some of the  world's poorest children will peer across the digital divide  this month -- reading electronic books, shooting digital video,  creating music and chatting with classmates online.
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MARK PRIGG, Technology Correspondent in San Francisco A COMPUTER costing Pounds 50 is to be distributed free to millions of children in the Third World.
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Intel Corp. said Tuesday its diminutive low-cost laptop will be evaluated in Brazil next year alongside a cheaper alternative from a nonprofit group seeking to bring computers to poor children worldwide.
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The debate is centered on whether cheap laptops are the best way to improve education in the developing world.
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By George Hsu  Nicholas Negroponte's plan to give laptop computers to 100 million poor children is enriching parts makers more than the principal manufacturer.
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Aimed at the education sector, the laptop will feature, among other things, a flash-based hard drive and a "wireless music server." But, the company says, it's "not really about the specs."
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Intel is working on another laptop aimed at serving the developing world.
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Continuing its effort to provide an alternative to the One Laptop Per Child project, Intel announced plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek to produce a notebook for developing countries that could cost as little as $200.
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Designed for schoolchildren in developing countries, these inexpensive, stripped-down portables are drawing lots of interest from the gadget set.
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The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its&#160;low-cost XO laptops: cows.&quot;We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle,&quot; wrote OLPC&#39;s Arjun Sarwal, in an e-mail dated Oct. 21 and posted to one of the group&#39;s discussion lists.Sarwal and others are now finalizing the design of the cow-powered generator.The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages. Working in a village close to Mumbai, Sarwal said the group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not &quot;consistently strong.&quot; There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high.&quot;But the village had an abundance of cattle that were being used in the fields. So we decided to design something around that,&quot; Sarwal wrote in a subsequent e-mail.The dynamo used in the system was taken from a Fiat car that is commonly used as taxis in Mumbai and therefore both cheap and readily available.OLPC is close to putting its XO laptop into production, but has been beset by delays and rising costs. Originally intended to cost $100 each, the&#160;cost has since risen to nearly $200. And production is also moving slowly.After a trial production run in August, OLPC had hoped to start mass production in late September or early October. That date has now slipped to Nov. 12, according to a Reuters report that quoted the group&#39;s chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepsen.
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Intel is working on an updated version of its&#160;Classmate PC&#160;designed for schoolchildren in developing countries, part of a wider effort to spur demand for low-cost laptops.Based on the company&#39;s&#160;upcoming Silverthorne processor, the new Classmate PC will likely be sleeker and have longer battery life than the current version, according to Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel&#39;s Asia-Pacific operations.&quot;It&#39;s fair to say that there is a Silverthorne-based Classmate design in the works that would likely come out coincidentally with the microprocessor,&quot; Shenoy said, adding that Intel has not determined pricing for the new laptop design.Silverthorne, which is billed as being easy on both power and the pocketbook, is part of Intel&#39;s Menlow platform that also includes the upcoming Poulsbo chip set. The dual-core chip is scheduled for release during the middle of this year and is central to Intel&#39;s plans for small, handheld computers that Intel calls MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices, and low-cost laptops, like the Classmate and Asustek&#39;s Eee PC.The current Classmate PC is a big-boned, 1.4 kilogram machine with a 900MHz Celeron M processor and a 7-inch screen. The laptop runs Windows XP and comes with Wi-Fi, 256MB of RAM and 2GB of flash memory in lieu of a hard disk. These specifications won&#39;t send a gamer&#39;s heart racing, but they are enough to get the intended job done.Priced at around $285, the Classmate PC is roughly $100 more expensive than the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s XO laptop, the Classmate&#39;s main competitor. Intel has said volume production would bring down the Classmate&#39;s cost to about $200, but the low-cost laptops have so far grabbed more headlines than sales.Even so, Intel&#39;s Classmate PC development efforts have had a wide impact, largely thanks to the Eee PC, which uses many of the same components but has a thinner, more stylish design.Consumer enthusiasm for the Eee PC largely caught Intel off guard. When the low-cost laptop, which also uses a 900MHz Celeron M processor, was announced at the Computex trade show last year, Intel expected Asustek to announce a $199 laptop for education customers. But the Taiwanese computer maker had other ideas and declared -- to the surprise of Intel executives -- that the Eee PC would instead be marketed to consumers in markets around the world.While the Eee PC&#39;s price tag climbed substantially from the original announced price, at $400 or so the small laptops remain a relative bargain and users have been snapping them up as fast as Asustek can make them.As other computer makers show interest in following Asustek&#39;s lead, Intel has embraced the low-cost laptop as an important product segment for the consumer market, as well as the education market.&quot;We think that there&#39;s going to be a wide variety of multinationals and local OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] who decide to go after this segment,&quot; Shenoy said.
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Businesses in Europe, Asia can net bucks for outdated computer equipment, company says.
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Indian labs churn out technologies to help users in developing countries keep up with the information age even if they can't afford a computer, don't live near a phone or speak a language that can't be typed on a standard keyboard. By Manu Joseph.
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InfoWorld - The One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC) has teamed up with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to launch a pilot project in Haiti, the first time the group will be able to comprehensively evaluate the idea of giving laptops directly to students as a learning tool.
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The One Laptop Per Child project was supposed to start production in October, but due to "last-minute bugs," the bulk of production has been delayed until November 12. That means the project will have trouble delivering laptops to children in Uruguay and Peru, the only countries that have ordered the machines so far, in time for kids to use them over their summer vacation.
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New lineup of low-cost PCs includes with some multimedia capabilities.
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Pixel Qi is looking to create a $75 laptop and trying to advance low-cost computers and power-efficient laptops, mobile phones and other consumer electronics that are sunlight readable.