Good Lord, $100 for one of these toys? They look like something designed by Fisher Price--and they're seriously overpriced. They obviously aren't worth a penny over $25.00, and, besides, you can do more with an Etch-a-Sketch or a Lite Brite. Even with Sesame Street cross-licensing, I don't see these things serving much purpose. I bet they aren't even dishwasher safe. Why don't they just make a laptop out of Lego blocks? At least then you could reassemble it into something that a Third World country might actually find useful, like a hand-cranked Espresso Machine or a weapon of mass destruction.

By the Dog, they don't even Windows Vista installed on them. How you gonna have an Authentic Microsoft Windows Vista Trusted Computing experience with one of these?

I don't know what Negroponte's true intentions are, but the name has me suspicious, and I'm convinced he's out to keep the "Third" in the phrase Third World Country. These folks don't need $100 laptops. They need $4,500 gaming rings from Alienware and gift certificates for iTunes. How else are they gonna evolve into an advanced DRM civilization? Geez.

Ahhh....you're just upset because I had a post with photos, and CC licensed one's at that.

But maybe you are right. Those poor students will be stuck using Fedora Core and tearing up the operating system since they can download the source and edit it themselves.

What kind of learning experience is that if they start playing with the innards of the operating system on their own? ;-)

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Charlie | cyberdash

Gee Matt, do you have something against bright colors and rounded edges? Did a Weeble bite you as a child (or was it a Weebl in search of pie)? Have nightmares with the Fischer Price peg-person versions of Bert and Ernie? Seriously, before I even read Charlie's comment, my first thought was "I want it." It's nice looking, most likely tough, and even better, potentially will give children in technologically under-represented countries access to technology that normally they would not even come close to seeing, much less owning.

Besides that, it's pretty and I'm attracted to bright, shiny objects.:-) More importantly, I think children will like it and they are the audience for this little bit of visual rhetoric.

I feel like Homer Simpson looking at a donut, drooling. Matt, on the other hand, has an avatar/pic that looks rather like Satan. Hmmmm.

I do have to say I don't like the orange (or whatever) and blue, but I do like the green. A green machine. Cool that. But what's with the horns on them?

bradley

bleckblog.org

Those are the wifi antennas. They are directional like on most home wifi routers.

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Charlie | cyberdash

There's an effort to gain 100,000 signatures of people willing to buy the laptop at $300 so that it can support purchasing laptops for kids who need them. I just signed on :)

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Charlie | cyberdash

Okay, the computers look cool and all, and I kinda want one, but what about Negroponte's vision of ubiquitous computing? The one where those jungle dwellers are drawn to the computer because it's the brightest light they have at night in their straw hut? The one where connectivity is lorded above all else, including the likes of us teachers? Is this really a vision we want to support? There are strings attached to these computers we're looking at kinda like new toys (oh ee oh, nothing too demanding), but it doesn't seem those strings have been talked about too much. Or else they've been talked about to death and are now background noise? I'm ambivelant on this.

bradley

bleckblog.org

I'm somewhat disappointed to see them all running on plug-in AC adapters, rather than pictured with the wind-up power cranks that I thought were one of the most intelligently equitable aspects of the prototype design. With computers, access has many, many interlocking hierarchies, of which a regular supply of electricity is the single most fundamental.

Speaking of which, Charlie, thanks for pointing out the opportunity to pledge support -- though it looks like whether the project will actually allow pledgers to make good on their promise is in doubt. Still, I'm adding my name to the list.

--
Mike
www.vitia.org