DailyTech - 3 Million New Orders for OLPCs

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IT 3 Million New Orders for OLPCs
Tuan Nguyen (Blog) - August 1, 2006 10:41 AM

29 comment(s) - last by TomZ.. on Aug 2 at 8:40 AM

Ethical concerns still abound

According to the OLPC organization, three new countries have jumped onto the OLPC bandwagon, each ordering one million units. Argentina, Brazil and Thailand have all committed to purchasing a total of three million OLPCs. The new orders follow Nigeria's own order of one million OLPCs. Khaled Hassounah, OLPC program director for the Middle East and Africa regions said that while Nigeria has not fully finalized its purchase, the OLPC organization is "actively moving ahead with Brazil, Argentina and Thailand."

Just several days ago, India announced that it may not participate in the OLPC project. The education secretary of India raised concerns that "fancy tools" such as a laptop will hurt the mental growth of a child. India argues that many of the world's top minds and most successful people went through school during a time when laptops did not even exist.

Despite the concerns over in India, the OLPC organization says it will actively pursue other countries. The OLPC project aims to provide millions of laptops to needy children in developing countries. Although governments must pay for the laptops, the units will be distributed free of charge. The laptops themselves cost roughly $140 each and even come with their own power source.

Although the OLPC project is supported by many companies such as AMD (OLPCs run on AMD processors), eBay, Google, Red Hat and others, many people have expressed similar concerns as India. Some governments are saying that needy children in developing countries need food, water, health care and better education -- not laptops.

Update 08/04/2006: OLPC representatives have denied this commitment.

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$400 million and counting

By creathir on 8/1/2006 10:56:42 AM , Rating: 2

Pretty good money. Even if the creators of this idea had as low of a profit margin as 0.5%, they are looking at having made $2,000,000. Not too shabby for recent MIT grads...

Like I've always said... this has NOTHING to do with educating the masses... follow that money trail, and you'll come to your answer.

- Creathir

RE: $400 million and counting

By masher2

(blog) on 8/1/2006 11:06:10 AM , Rating: 2

> "Even if the creators of this idea had as low of a profit margin as 0.5%, they are looking at having made $2,000,000. Not too shabby for recent MIT grads..."

OLPC is a non-profit association. The creators of this idea aren't receiving any portion of the profits, if any. They're allowed fair compensation for time spent on the project, under stringent rules set by the IRS.

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RE: $400 million and counting

By creathir on 8/1/2006 11:17:16 AM , Rating: 2

If fair compensation is... say... a percentage of each PC sold... that could mean extensive money... not to mention the fame for "bringing PCs to the less fortunate"...

- Creathir

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RE: $400 million and counting

By TomZ on 8/1/06, Rating: 0

RE: $400 million and counting

By UNHchabo on 8/1/2006 1:00:49 PM , Rating: 2

If you guys want to, you can look up the OLPC organization's finances, which are publically available as a non-profit. You can decide for yourself if these guys are taking too much for themselves.

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RE: $400 million and counting

By BladeVenom on 8/1/2006 12:12:44 PM , Rating: 2

And are the people running OLPC donating their time for free, or are they getting paid?

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RE: $400 million and counting

By TomZ on 8/1/2006 11:21:49 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Not too shabby for recent MIT grads...

I don't think that's really an accurate characterization - these aren't a bunch of kids just out of school. For example:

Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman
Nicholas is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Nicholas was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966.
http://www.laptop.org/people.en_US.html

Many of the others have industry experience as well.

I'm not fond of the OLPC initiative - I agree that governments in developing nations should spend their limited resources on food, water, education, infrastructure, etc. instead of frivolous purchases like laptops.

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RE: $400 million and counting

By TheDoc9 on 8/1/2006 1:46:41 PM , Rating: 1

These laptops are an investment into that countries future, why can't ya'll see that? Does anyone here really even know how accurate the food/water argument is?

Food and water will only last a few months for a few people at that cost. What then? Continue doing the same thing? They're giving their people a way to compete in the world market. This is far more valuable to the long term future of a country.

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Yes and No

By othercents on 8/1/2006 11:26:08 AM , Rating: 2

What can a child do with a laptop? Education is the main key for this OLPC movement. However for some people to be educated then the goverments need to setup an online education classes. Because some of these children don't have schools or those that do, don't have libraries to get more information. But I guess the biggest problem with this is, if a child doesn't have schools then how will they know what the laptop is saying? I guess it does make a good shovel.

The OLPC is great for countries that have education and the basic needs of their people met. They would enable the children to research new and exciting things that their teachers wouldn't know. For other countries that don't have the basic needs met then those should come first. However there are many countries that have the money, but because of their goverment this money is wasted.

Personally I would rather not see handouts. I would rather educate people on how to support themselves. This is different in each country since sometimes supporting yourself is working a job, but sometimes it is just learning how to cultivate the land and make your own food. Handouts just make some people more dependent on them.

Other

RE: Yes and No

By peternelson on 8/1/2006 11:35:10 AM , Rating: 2

I think if you give it for free to the recipient they may value it less. eg giving away a ticket to a concert free, some people may not even show up. If they pay only a token amount they are likely to attend.

If they understood the REAL cost of the laptop was like THREE YEARS of their SALARY or something then they would treat it with great respect and make sure they got useage out of it.

For these reasons I think recipients should make a contribution to the cost, possibly based on their means eg to a subsistence farmer it's $5, to an engineer's family it's $10 maybe?

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RE: Yes and No

By othercents on 8/1/2006 11:51:39 AM , Rating: 2

Good Point, but it really depends on the children. Some children take great care of their stuff and others don't. It really doesn't matter how much it costs. However these computers are being built to with stand most everything. If you have a child that craves education then they will take care of their laptop, children who are mechanical will probably take it apart, and other children that crave distruction... well... will destroy.

Other

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RE: Yes and No

By Lifted on 8/1/2006 12:57:18 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
If they understood the REAL cost of the laptop was like THREE YEARS of their SALARY or something

Or something is right. Do you really think $140 is 3 years salary in Argentina, Brazil or Thailand?

And people here are criticizing the education systems of these other countries. Unbelievable.

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RE: Yes and No

By masher2

(blog) on 8/1/2006 1:00:32 PM , Rating: 2

> Do you really think $140 is 3 years salary in Argentina, Brazil or Thailand?"

I think East Timor has the lowest per-capita income in the world...and even there, this laptop would only be some 4 months worth of the average salary.

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How to spend $140

By DallasTexas on 8/1/2006 10:55:01 AM , Rating: 1

Well, $140 could provide the following to the poor:

(a) Food and clean water for a year
(b) Basic healthcare and disease control for 2 years
(c) A laptop

We'll pick (c)! For each OLPC - AMD makes a buck, the lobbyist makes a 50cents and the government makes $4 bucks and everyone else is happy with the extra business. Done deal!!

Oops, I forgot the child gets a laptop. Yeah Yeah. that too.

RE: How to spend $140

By creathir on 8/1/06, Rating: 0

RE: How to spend $140

By hexsel on 8/1/2006 12:09:16 PM , Rating: 5

This is ridiculous. I'm from Brazil and I know it. $140 will pay a teacher's salary for HALF A MONTH. It will pay for food for a child for a couple of months.

What part of the project you don't understand? This project is not targetted to starving people in a place where the education can't be achieved. This is targetted to semi-developed regions that have access to basic infrastructure (sometimes underdeveloped, but present) which would NEVER have access to computer education otherwise. In Brazil the majority of non-minimum-wage jobs require computer skills, but people have to pay for training from their own pockets, and don't usually have a computer to train at home! Never mind access to any network.

It is also a boon to OSS, as kids that would be otherwise doing nothing (public libraries in Brazil are a in a shameful state) may be doing something productive, and may even make some money out of it.

And no, books are not cheaper than a laptop. A book in Brazil costs about 30% less than a book in Canada. That is still around USD 12-30 (more for university books, mostly imported anyway). How many books can you buy with USD140? Not enough to take away the opportunity a computer may grant.

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um...

By kattanna on 8/1/2006 11:00:10 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
\Khaled Hassounah, OLPC program director for the Middle East and Africa regions said that while Nigeria has not fully finalized its purchase, the OLPC organization is "actively moving ahead with Brazil, Argentina and Thailand

i thought ealierit was stated that nigeria had paid in full...

so what..nigeria waiting for the bank routing info from these people to "complete" the deal...

what gives?

RE: um...

By 05SilverGT on 8/1/2006 11:03:19 AM , Rating: 2

That would be correct! The Nigerian email scam on a larger scale. lol

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RE: um...

By peternelson on 8/1/2006 11:29:36 AM , Rating: 2

ROFL yeah,

We represent a large government and have great news. We can receive computer equipment worth $140 million.

We just need a little bit of money to start the deal going through.

Can you pay the first million dollars for us, then we can get the computers, and sell them off to make our money back. Everyone wins.....

Just send us your bank transfer details....

Sounds familiar ;-)

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Ignorance

By Homerboy on 8/1/2006 4:30:52 PM , Rating: 2

The ignorance posted in all these OLPC threads is astounding. People posting ill-informed opinions, casting ignorant judgments on people they know nothing about, and now less abput the project itself.

I suggest people do some reading (more than whats on DT) before they start formulating opinions on the OLPC project.

RE: Ignorance

By TomZ on 8/1/06, Rating: 0

RE: Ignorance

By Kuroyama on 8/2/2006 2:37:21 AM , Rating: 2

I imagine the reference is to those claiming this to be 3 years salary (which masher2 points out is completely wrong), or those suggesting this is a money grabbing scheme by greedy MIT graduates. Certainly those comments suggest an argument driven by an anti-government ideology, and not any particular attempt to think the issue through.

I think the Brazil post is one of the most informative I have seen so far, as the author points out a particular niche in which for the OLPC may be appropriate, while not suited to a country like most in sub-Suharan Africa (perhaps OLPC purchaser Nigeria included).

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question

By msva124 on 8/1/2006 11:09:44 PM , Rating: 2

Did they do any testing to figure out whether this would be a good idea? As in, give prototypes to small groups of children in a few different countries. Study them for 3-6 months to see what they do with the laptops.

Of course this is not reflective of what might happen with millions of laptops, but it's better than just throwing them out there without any prior research. I'm assuming they did in fact do something similar to this.

RE: question

By Kuroyama on 8/2/2006 2:41:20 AM , Rating: 2

Since when do people test educational ideas for real-life use? My little sister went through elementary school in California when they had the non-memorization way of teaching math, and it was so bad that she was still counting on her fingers in fourth grade (she was later salutorian at her High School, so this was not due to a lack of intelligence). This was clearly never properly tested for effectiveness, but was nevertheless implemented on a state-wide level.

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RE: question

By TomZ on 8/2/06, Rating: 0

Tech Support...?

By jdramire on 8/1/2006 1:15:59 PM , Rating: 2

Has anybody ever thought about the far reaching implications of sending 4,000,000 laptops... anywhere? When the computer goes boom what do you or I do? Fix it. When the computer goes boom on your mother, what does she do? Tell you to fix it. Now, what would happen if the computer went boom on your mother, and neither you nor your buddy nor Geek Attack were there to fix it?

Who will support these computers after they are shipped to who knows where in the world...?

RE: Tech Support...?

By Pirks on 8/1/2006 3:14:52 PM , Rating: 1

quote:
Who will support these computers after they are shipped to who knows where in the world

They are disposable - throw away broken one and get a new fresh replacement (probably an upgraded one? I smell BUSINESS here!) - just like disposable shavers, toothpicks etc ;-)

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A note about non-profits

By Dfere on 8/1/2006 12:54:30 PM , Rating: 2

They are big business today. The poster who asked about salaries was correct. United Way purportedly exists to aggregate and issue money to charities who could not otherwise exist. Years ago, before desktop publishing and the net, it was hard to create and publish marketing materials. In addition we have a whole new career option for marketing: Non Profit Specialties. This has gotten so proftiable the Congress, through the IRS, has enacted disclosure laws such that you have to tell them who did marketing and how much you paid them, and how much the events raised. Also, in reality, most public service firms (accouting and law) all have partners who are board members, who strongarm employees into contributions that allow them to keep a seat. They then stick the board appointment on their resume and use it for marketing and networking, furthering their own ends.

Professors load board appointments as well in their respective industries, this helps lead to marketing and grants and tenure as well.

The only measure you really have is the expense ratio- In my mind over 10% expense, don't support the foundation.

Come on

By c4xiayu on 8/1/2006 12:54:42 PM , Rating: 2

It is not a $1,000 laptop. Just one hundred bucks. If they name it Universial Computer Access Plan, some of you guys wont be so negative on that, right?