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Negroponte's $100 Laptop Just Became the $140 Laptop.

Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 23

The long-awaited $100 laptop for the bottom of the pyramid is heading toward production, according to it’s champion, MIT’s Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, but it will be a bit more expensive—$140 to start. With more volume, it could drop to $100 by 2008. Negroponte was talking before a Red Hat conference and predicted that one of the biggest impacts of the laptop would be to spread linux throughout the world. Red Hat is supplying the linux operating system and AMD the chip.

Actually, AMD and Intel, as most of you already know, have their own ideas of how to empower people in towns and villages throughout India, Africa and other BOP areas. AMD is already selling the AMD Personal Internet Communicator, designed by M3 Design (the now-$140 laptop was done by Design Continuum) which you plug into a screen and keyboard.

I have it on good authority that both won silver awards in the upcoming Industrial Design Excellence Awards—the AMD in the computers category and Negroponte’s laptop in the Design Explorations category (as the Hundred Dollar Laptop Computer).

I’m hoping they both get out in mass soon so they do what they are intended to do—plug in hundreds of millions of people with little income to the net. These are two very difference approaches to solving that problem and I’d like to see which one works better.

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Reader Comments

Mike Reardon

June 24, 2006 09:04 AM

NComputing and thin side computing is looking to pass the $100 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) going down.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_27/b3991411.htm

Thin side computing offered as a business standard, and for government agencies including schools. Could make a stronger computing presence in the third world at less cost.

For World cultures verbal communications are more powerful than western text driven formats now in offered computers. I lean towards a commercial smart phone/pda, braking into the $100 world market first.

Georges de Wailly

June 25, 2006 08:11 AM

Funny approach,
Some people consider they are masters in technology when they demonstrate their ability to push back some limits. A second machine like a Pentium III or even a Pentium II equipped with Linux is powerful enough to perform over 80% of the common tasks. How much do such machines cost?
So, why reinvent the wheel. Just recycle!

RitaSue Siegel

June 26, 2006 10:16 AM

You comment that, "These are two very difference approaches to solving that problem and I'd like to see which one works better."

Why not cheer for them both? THere is no reason for them to be competitive.

Laptop hq

May 29, 2007 11:06 AM

At first, you just had to jiggle the cord a bit, and the connection would be fine, and it would charge. Then it kept getting harder and harder to do.

Laptop hq

May 30, 2007 11:54 AM

I think Marshall has full right to be enraged. The mail clearly says somewhere in it that “send it back when you no longer need it for product reviews.”
I don’t care what the rest of the mail says or means.

m anderson

May 25, 2008 11:06 PM

are the $140.00 lap tops for sale in the united states. if they are I would like to buy one. I am on Social Security and I can affor one of those.

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Want to stop talking about innovation and learn how to make it work for you? Bruce Nussbaum takes you deep into the latest thinking about innovation and design with daily scoops, provocative perspectives and case studies. Nussbaum is at the center of a global conversation on the growing discipline of innovation and the deepening field of design thinking. Read him to discover what social networking works—and what doesn’t. Discover where service innovation is going and how experience design is shaping up. Learn which schools are graduating the most creative talent and which consulting firms are the hottest. And get his take on what the smartest companies are doing in the U.S., Asia and Europe, far ahead of the pack.

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