more on $125.00 PC, coming in June

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Maney, Kevin" <kmaney () usatoday com>
Date: March 20, 2006 8:21:26 AM EST
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: RE: [IP] $125.00 PC, coming in June

FWIW, this was in my blog on Friday:

Another $100 laptop wrinkle...or two

First there was Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop. Then Bill Gates'
proposal to use cell phones instead. And now we have an interesting new
entrant in the push to get cheap computing to the masses in developing
countries.

I spent some time this week talking with Rajesh Jain, co-founder of
India-based Novatium, which right now is manufacturing its first 10,000
$100 computers. The Novatium computer is not really a laptop or a
desktop, but probably closer to the old idea of a network computer. It
is about the size of a copy of The World is Flat, and plugs into either
a TV or monitor and any keyboard. It has no hard drive or internal
storage. If you want to save something, you do it on a portable USB key
drive, which seems like a particularly nifty idea.

The chips and other insides, Jain says, are more like a cellphone than a
PC, which helps keep the price down. Buyers would then pay $10 a month
for a network connection and access to network-based software -- most of
it open-source. Unlike Negroponte's laptop, Novatium's uses regular
electric power. Also, Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program is
selling its computers only in bulk to governments. Novatium will sell
its computers to individuals.

Meanwhile, Gates on Wednesday dissed Negroponte's project again. "If you
are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband
connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez,
get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're
not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates
said at a Microsoft event for government leaders.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/maney






Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
703 854 3489

www.kevinmaney.com


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:16 AM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] $125.00 PC, coming in June



Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: March 20, 2006 1:01:49 AM EST
To: Dave <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: $125.00 PC, coming in June

http://htdaw.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=284199

Monday, March 20, 2006 at 12:00 AM EST
Publish Date : 3/17/2006 2:09:00 PM   Source : Technology News
Onlypunjab.com



A Chinese company has claimed to have developed the nation's first
low-cost computer priced at 125 US dollars, using an indigenous central
processing unit and the new product will hit the market in June, a
report said today.

Costing around 1,000 yuan (125 U.S. Dollars), the low-cost computer uses
a Chinese-made Godson II CPU.

"We hope everyone can afford our computers," said Zhang Fuxin, an expert
of the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) under the Chinese Academy
of Sciences in charge of developing "Longmeng" computers.

Last year, a leading US IT expert Nicholas Negroponte proposed a
100-dollar laptop for the "One Laptop per Child" project. The prototype
was unveiled by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Negroponte in
November, Xinhua news agency reported.

The performance of Longmeng, or Dragon Dream, is equivalent to a 1G
Pentium III desktop, according to Zhang. It is a computer, a DVD player
and also a video game player.

The computer, equipped with standard PC accessories, is portable as it
is the size of a textbook and weighs 500 grams.

In September 2002, the ICT manufactured the first Chinese-made CPUs,
coded Godson I.

http://onlypunjab.com/fullstory2k5-insight-news-status-10-
newsID-90664.html



--
"The people who still support George Bush are the same people who
believe Adam and Eve rode to church on the backs of dinosaurs". -  SNL




-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as kmaney () usatoday com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/



-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/