http://www.xogiving.org/

Well, I am being somewhat tongue in cheek, but for about the same price as an N800 you can buy 2 OLTPs, one for you and one for a child in a developing country. Oh, and you also get a tax receipt for the donated computer.

I have never seen an OLTP but the specs look pretty interesting so I think I will buy one.

Just buy an Asus Eee and give your money to a charity that actually does something with it besides buying SUVs for its "directors".

Poor kids don't need computers, they need good education.

Currently vaporware. Also not very creative and not suited for children.
Oh I would expect 'they need food' argument. That's another one often made. In fact OLPC could give them self-education which may be better. And the laptop may be even cheaper that the teacher. But yes, that's debatable and mostly off-topic.

I think those favoring asus eee (i.e. boring PC laptop design made of cheap components) may not know about some innovative hardware and software in OLPC - power management, durability, mesh networking, system designed for children. For me OLPC looks far more interesting than Asus.

Food is just about the last thing developing countries need.

And if you truly believe that a laptop can be educational on itself, we're through talking on this subject.

there is a long way between lack of food and lack of education.

there are places in the world where food is available, but where the access to information is poor, at best. hell, mobile phones are spreading like wildfire as they dont need wiring (that was sometimes stolen and sold as scrap copper), with "pay as you go", or whatever those "cash card" like plan are called, being the norm.

so say that you can put a server up, maybe at the community school or other public location. and it can connect to the mobile phone network to grab new material. that way you do not have to ship and store large stocks of books. books that often are out of date long before they reach the intended users.

a classical problem when aid systems where new, was that one would give a community a tractor. teach then how to use it, but never think about the infrastructure and knowledge needed to maintain it.

there is a lot of info that "we" take for granted that may never reach some parts of the world in the classical ways. the olpc may be one solution for that.

or like the classical saying goes:
give a man a fish and he is fed for a day.
teach him how to fish and he may never go hungry again.

This is a complicated issue. I am disabled because of very bad RSI due to using a computer since I was child (and from slaving away as a QA tester in my 20s).
I worry about our kids (in the US) who are using computers in school because no one is really looking deeply at the consequenses of introducing PCs to children. Thousands and thousands or adults have bad RSI, even places like MIT have an epidemic of this problem (RSI=carpal tunnel or tendonitis). It is the fastest growing work injury through out the US. But when people talk about giving a laptop to every child in an elementary school it never comes up. No planning considers health isssues for children.
So I think, poverty and education issues aside, there are complex issues related to technology and how it affects our minds and bodies. The idea of free PCs for poor children is just too simplistic. It sounds nice on the surface of the idea.

Lastly, I am all for doing anything to help people in 3rd world countries - so I am not against OLPC and applaud the OP for even caring about someone not in the 1st world. Too often we in the rich countries are too out of touch with the rest of humanity.

agreed. alas, it is sad that these kinds of ideas still exist. ultimately, the idea seeks to replace the teacher with the machine. i suppose in some cases this is preferable. in most cases, it is abhorrent.

hmmm.... ....

...or provide him with an MBA and he can own the fishing pole company. but that would require an education.

not true. Maine and WA have piloted 1-to-1 programs in the States. Health issues (among others) have been a big issue for these school districts.

agreed. he does this (in his own way):
http://www.educationfutures.com/
read James Wertsch if you're interested in the impact of "tools" on thinking. amazing (and complicated stuff).

like Detroit? or Oakland? you must mean just east of Raleigh....

I think we should be careful not to write off the ability of IT to affect more than just IT in the developing world. Mobile phones were depicted as luxury items just a few years ago, but they're now staple products in the developing world, in fact the vast majority of mobile phone sales are in developing countries, and that's without any kind of subsidy or charity support.

There was one study quoted by the BBC which found that a poor country with a 10% higher penetration of mobile phones had an average GDP growth rate that was 0.6% higher. That sounds small, but it's a huge difference for a single technology to make to an entire country's economy. 0.6% is more than enough to cover the cost of the handsets (especially now that you can buy an unsubsidised unlocked handset for about US$40), so the presence of the phones must be making poor countries wealthier on average.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4331863.stm

I'm not saying cheap connected laptops will be as influential or successful as cheap mobile phones, but they might be, and we ought to at least give cheap laptops a chance. Absolutely nobody expected mobiles to be so successful in the world's poorest countries, but they have been.

Phones are not a replacement for food or jobs or water, but they make the obtaining of all of those things easier, cheap phones are oil in the cogs. Maybe cheap laptops could be too.




On another topic, the RSI issue is a very interesting point to raise. People seem to just ignore it because it's not a very sexy topic, and it reminds me very much of the way warnings about headphones on music players being too loud are just stonewalled by the tech community despite good evidence of the damage they do.

The EU actually has a law preventing music players and headphones from being louder than a certain level, but all it brings is derision from tech fans. The thing that annoys me is that the critics don't address how constant daily use of in-ear headphones is going to affect people 20 or 30 years down the line. It's especially worrying with more and more children using music players with headphones.

At least headphone technology has a bright hope of noise cancelling technology, but is anyone really doing anything mainstream to fight RSI?