Slate's Cyrus Farivar looks at the numbers of Negroponte's $100 laptop plan and says they don't add up (http://www.slate.com/id/2131201/).
The price of components is well over a $100, and even if the components could be bought on a volume high enough to bring prices down, the demand isn't there, nor is the seed money to generate.
Still, all is not lost. The article does point to some inexpensive alternatives, and some intriguing possibilities that, while not yet all that inexpensive, are really cool projects, such as Inveneo's "Linux boxes with solar panels, a bike generator for cloudy weather, and a directional WiFi antenna that can get you on the Internet via satellite from almost anywhere," which projects, with volume and funding can also begin to come in cheaply. The Inveneo (http://www.inveneo.org/) rig cost about $1,800, but geez what a cool idea. It'll be interesting to see if they can get enough lift to bring their price down. They need a George Soros type to give them a shot in the arm.
Or lots of little people adding up to a Sorosian sized boost.
at retail cost? give me a break
Negroponte admitted that the the cost of the laptop would be slightly higher at first, but that the goal was to commit to such volume that it would come in at extremely low cost. Farivar states that a 1 GB flash drive is $70 retail. Well, I can buy a 1 GB flash card for about $40 after rebate. If this is such a good analysis, why wouldn't he make the more direct comparison of the flash memory instead of talking about flash drives? Similarly, you can buy a wireless card for $10 after rebate. Now imagine what happens when there is no card but the wifi chip is built into the motherboard. I bet cost is about $1 or so. Same with the flash memory and everything else. It will all be built into the motherboard at a tiny fraction of the cost of retail components.
Nice rhetorical ploy, though. But I wouldn't let Farivar design or build me a computer. LOL
and what about Dell
Dell can make a $500 laptop, right? Subtract out the Microsoft tax, don't add in the stickers during manufacturing, reduce the cost of their display (perhaps use Negroponte's screen), and eliminate disk drives (and the extra manufacturing time required to install them), and I'll bet they could produce a laptop for around $200 cost.
Sure. Negroponte's proposal depends upon economies of scale, but it does not seem unreasonable at all.
know better?
I'd think somebody as institutionally familiar as you are with the work of Charles Moran and the sub-$200 AlphaSmart SmartBoard (Moran and Hunter, 1998) would know better than to pass along such FUD, Nick. And "the demand isn't there"? How so?
I gotta say, I'm with Charlie on this one.
--
Mike
http://www.vitia.org/
Additionally, the volume
Additionally, the volume would be there in U.S. contributions for aid relief and educational initiatives in Africa. I would imagine other non-profits for third-world education might be interested, too. Additionally, these will be released to underfunded public elementary schools as a secondary option, I believe. As for the $100 price tag, I agree that the original charge is substantial (more than $100), but the idea is that an additional investment would cover start-up costs and eventually level out. There are some parts that are less expensive than your usual computer--there isn't a hard drive, for one (as the small parts on the interior could be destroyed if a child plays too hard with it [hence the shock-absorbing rubber exterior]), as well as the screen using a special kind-of ink instead of plasma, which doubles as allowing for black/white high contrast work outdoors during the day. At any rate, given Negroponte's past work, I sincerely doubt that this is a huge "rhetorical" ploy. Besides, if we take it from Cicero, he'd be that more effective if he were telling the truth.