To continue reading, crank computer for five minutes
The long-awaited hand-cranked sub-$100 laptop from MIT has been unveiled. Kofi Annan likes it, people everywhere think it’s kinda neat. Intel doesn’t care for it.
“Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop—I think a more realistic title should be ‘the $100 gadget’,” Barrett, chairman of the world’s largest chipmaker, told a press conference in Sri Lanka on Friday. “The problem is that gadgets have not been successful.”
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has welcomed the development of the small, hand-cranked, lime-green devices, which can set up their own wireless networks and are intended to bring computer access to areas that lack reliable electricity.
“It turns out what people are looking for is something is something that has the full functionality of a PC,” he [Barrett] said. “Reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown up PC … not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power.”
First of all, isn’t the computing industry trying to move us toward dependency on “servers in the sky” that will deliver all of our software and system functionality? It seems to me that Microsoft has been trying to get us away from actually installing Office on our computers, and instead getting us to pay subscription fees to access the software on their servers. Besides, “servers in the sky” just sounds cool. It’s like an Apples In Stereo song.
And second, Barrett’s complaint that people in third world countries without reliable electricity won’t want the computers because they’re not full-functioned PC’s is a little bit like Ford insisting that consumers won’t want a fuel-efficient hybrid compact car because they really want a gas-guzzling SUV at fifteen times the cost while fuel costs $5 a gallon. On a theoretical level, it’s right. See, it shows an understanding of the consumer mind, but not much grasp on reality. People who want laptops want to be able to do laptop things with them. But for people in areas where they don’t have power, the hand crank is kind of a nice thing compared to brick that you have to plug in to your non-existent wall socket.