Potential computer users in the developing world will not want a basic $100 hand-cranked laptop due to be rolled out to millions, according to Craig Barrett, ECO of Intel.
Schoolchildren in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria will begin receiving the first few million textbook style computers from the MIT Media Lab run by Nicholas Negroponte from early 2006.
“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.”
I guess it is all a question of nomenclature. The $100 “Computer” is the equivalent of pyrite (a.k.a fool’s gold) but the $100 “Cute Toy That Acts Like A Computer” could be the next Elmo this Christmas season. The word Computer, when applied to a device, implies a minimum level of expected performance which, by my experience, can not be achieved for less than $1,000 no matter which decade you lived in. (My first machine in 1987 cost $1,500, my second machine in 1994 cost $1,400, my third machine in 1998 cost $1,300 and my current was $1,100 in 2003).
Claims of $100 computers should be taken with the same grain of salt as multi-level marketing.