Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: $100 Laptop Has Four Million Orders, Microsoft Counters

TR Editors' blog

Insights, opinions, and our editors' analysis of the latest in emerging technologies.

Blog Topics

$100 Laptop Has Four Million Orders, Microsoft Counters

While the Linux-based $100 laptop project continues to gain traction, Microsoft unveiled a mobile PC prototype.

By Brad King

The $100 laptop movement, spearheaded by former head of the MIT Media Lab Nicholas Negroponte, is close to becoming a reality, as several countries have placed orders for four million of the units, according to this Register (U.K.) article.

Negroponte's $100 laptop and the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative have said they will begin production on the boxes, which come with a Linux-based operating system, once they have received five million orders.

The news has excited the Linux community, which has followed the $100 laptop's development. From a post on LinuxDevices.com:

A spokesperson for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program revealed July 31 that the countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each committed to buy 1 million Linux laptops through the U.S.-based program.

This news comes on the heels of Microsoft finally moving toward the cheap, affordable computing market. Chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie demoed the FonePlus product last week, according to this Silicon.com article:

[Mundie] demonstrated word processing, multimedia playback and web browsing using scaled-down versions of Internet Explorer, Word and Windows Media Player. "For at least simplified applications, it's harder to distinguish this from a computer," he added.

It's still in the prototype phase, and execs at the company said they are exploring production options right now, which means it will be some time before Microsoft can realistically expect to enter the marketplace.

Comments

Close Comments

Difference of Attitudes

While Negroponte's wish is clearly to bridge the gap among rich and poor countries, giving children around the world opportunities and a future, eliminating the so-called digital divide, Microsoft once more is trying to get richer by exploiting someone else's weaknesses. I hope Negroponte's initiative to be a great success and would suggest Microsoft to try to not expand an already big bad will against itself. People are tired of Microsoft's bullish and arrogant attitude.

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (Ricardo Dias)
08/02/2006
Posts:1

Hopefully uSoft chokes on this one...

I personally am a Microsoft Windows user, but I am not satisfied at all. I would switch to Linux, unfortunately at my workplace everybody uses MS Windows... even for the server! Therefore I really hope these countries will soon (next 10 years) rise to become powerful enough to halt uSoft's arrogant pricing policies.

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (Count Zero)
08/02/2006
Posts:1

Anybody remember What IBM did to competitors?

Anybody remember What IBM did to competitors like Honeywell and Sperry and other competitors? They directed sales people considering a competitor to tell them IBM was working on a better product and they should wait for it. Since the adage was "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM," most companies did. end result, only IBM survived.
But Microsoft has a harder problem - a reputation for delivering buggy products and dropping them if they don't make it.
Am I'm the only one amused that Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to eradicate disease among childrem while infecting their computers.........

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (Jim)
08/02/2006
Posts:1

why is it only 'poor' countries buying this computer

why is it only poor countries buying this computer, surely children all over the world can benefit from a $100 computer and there is no shortage of poor children who do not have access to a computer ,even in countries as rich as the USA . this kind of subjective selection raises a few eyebrows .

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (lagosstar)
08/02/2006
Posts:1

Not only "poor countries"

If you care to visit the project's site (http://laptop.org/) you'll find in the "Map" section that there's a whole negotiation process going on with most countries governments around the worls. Here in Europe, where I live, although most countries can be considered "rich", every goverment is interested in the project. This is also the region of the world where we got together to collect some very significant fines from Microsoft, for its unclear monpolistic practices. That's much more of an eyebrow raiser.

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (Ricardo Dias)
08/02/2006
Posts:1

$100 Laptops-OLPC Program

Will the the EU commit & use the $$ from Microsoft fines to fund this project in US ?

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest ("PHIL")
08/03/2006
Posts:1

No orders for the $140 million PC

Two great errors in this article. First, even OLPC admits it doesn't have orders yet, and when they do, the price will be $140 million, not $100 dollars - these laptops can only be bought in orders of 1 million and are priced at $140+ per, not $100
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/countries/woops_did_we_say_ord.html

Rate this comment:

(Reply)

Guest (wayan)
08/13/2006
Posts:1