12/14/2023 0 Comments Mactracker alternative![]() ![]() He described how he and his team traveled to many countries and studied how they used laptops they were given. the most compelling description he gave was when he explained that the children would bring laptops home so they could be used as a light source. This really set the understanding of how these people are living. I’ve gotten into debates with people about whether he’s way off base, because these people need food, water and medicine first. I don’t disagree that they need these things, and there are people trying to fix those problems directly. Remember last week when I described the article from the Wall Street Journal about the kid in Africa who read about windmills in a used text book – imagine if he’d had the internet to read? I think that a multi-prong approach is a good idea – food, water, medicine, and technology in the hopes of allowing them to learn from the vast knowledge available on the internet. Over the last couple of years Negroponte has followed his dream to create a $100 laptop (when it gets to high volume) and I’ve been frustrated by all the people who are whining about what this laptop is NOT. Everywhere I turn I read people saying “well, it hasn’t got a hard drive” or “the screen is too small” or “it’s only got 256MB of RAM” or “it’s only a 433Mhz processor”. People want these for THEIR children, completely missing the point of what this laptop is all about, the problem it’s trying to solve. In November, the One Laptop Per Child program (or OLPC) opened up to the public to purchase one of these so called XO laptops. You’ve heard of deals where you can buy one get one free? this is the opposite, it’s buy two get one! The idea is you pay for two machines and one gets sent to a child in a third world company (and you get the tax deduction) and the other one is delivered to you. I decided to take them up on this so I could see it for myself and do a review that looked at it from the perspective Negroponte had envisioned, not the spoiled developed world perspective. Unfortunately I’m personally spoiled so my perspective is certainly skewed, but I’m going to try. ![]()
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