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MIT $ 100 LAPTOP
Intel's Craig Barrett frowns at MIT’s low cost laptop
$100 lap top should be called a low cost gadget says Craig Barrett.
13 December, 2005: Low cost computing has found a new critic in chipmaker Intel’s chairman Craig Barret. Naturally. The Intel boss has poked fun on the $100 hand-cranked basic lap top, which is to be made available to potential users in developing countries, by calling it a “$100 gadget”.
The slight is clearly noticeable. Intel thinks the $100 laptop, which is to be rolled out to thousands of wannabe computer enthusiasts in all over the developing world like Brazil, Thailand and Egypt, is too basic that the users wouldn’t want it.
The $100 laptop was unveiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) media lab run by Nicholas Negroponte in November this year.
“Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop. I think a more realistic title should be ‘the $100 gadget’,” Barrett said recently, adding the “the problem is that gadgets have not been successful.”
The United Nations is aggressively promoting the low cost laptops, with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan welcoming the development of the small, hand-cranked lime-green devices, which are to be rolled out in 2006.
The low cost laptops of MIT are able to set up their own wireless networks and bring computer access to areas that lack reliable electricity.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology plans to sell the laptops for governments ast the rate of $100 a unit, if it is meant for school children. The devices would be charges $200 from the general public who wants to buy it.
Analysts said even $200 is much cheaper than machines having Intel’s chip and that is why Intel is fuming. But the Intel chairman said the issues is that such experiments in the past have failed to click.
Barrett said users would not be satisfied with the new machine’s limited range, but the chipmaker seems to be forgetting that forget lowcost computing, even power needed for it is not available to millions of school students in the developing world.
Barrett, however, chose not to delve on this issue and looks at the MIT laptop as
a gadget with limited functioning.
“It turns out what people are looking for is something is something that has the full functionality of a PC,” he said. “Re-programmable to run all the applications of a grown up PC… not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power.”
The battlelines have been drawn and it is just a matter of days before the Intel line would be tested in the developing world.
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