To be honest, the 100 dollar laptop is a joke.
Lashing out at the indian gov for not buying into MIT media labs' Negroponte is great and all, but lets see what our alternatives are shall we?
Lets start at the outset.
Families are NOT going to buy a shitty, useless laptop for their kids, they simply don't have that kind of spare cash. It goes into food, education, cell phones (I'll get to this)
How did OLPC plan to make money?
BY MAKING THE GOVT SPEND MILLIONS ON THESE LAPTOPS
then leaving the govt to market them to a public that does not give a shit.
The creators will be lauded as geniuses trying to help the poor, and the govt as incompetents who failed to market the killer product (hey! it's cheap!) to the public.
If the govt tries to say that product quality wasn't up to the mark, or that the pricing was uncompetitive- the media will have a fucking field day with the govt insulting MIT.
First
The PC. PCs are always cheaper than laptops- the MIT model ignored this in favour of mobility. Guess what, a 250 dollar, fully functional PC used by 5 or more children is actually much more economical than a 100 dollar laptop.
Second.
The second hand market.
I had a PC. It cost my parents a bomb when they bought it. I played warcraft on it for many years, learnt a lot. But it was just faar to outdated after 6 years. These days, the son of the man who used to do our gardening might be playing warcraft on it.
The HP Laptop I'm writing on right now is 7 years old. On the market it would fetch me 3-4-5k (60-100 dollars) max. It's ancient. I refuse to sell it though, partially because of nostalgia I feel it is worth much more than the price It'd fetch in the market- even after 7 years of purchase. Someday I'll buy a new laptop, but I will pass this on to some child somewhere who can learn from it- it'd only net me 60 dollars on the market... and it's infinitely better than this 100 dollar OLPC crap. Imagine if there was a mechanism to start this kind of a secondhand business on a huge scale.
Imagine.
Thirdly.
Why would anyone by a 100 dollar laptop when they can get a (relatively) HIGHLY functional phone for 50-60 dollars. The phone translates into communication and tangible benefits rapidly, all without a strong need for literacy- while the 100 dollar laptop without an internet subscription is simply a document/picture viewer with a calculator.
There are fairly functional 30 dollar phones in the market, connecting indians to the world like a 100 (actually almost 200) dollar laptop can't dream of.
This is a wasted effort, according to me. And mixed with the second-hand market- phone prices crash even lower. We just need to use this to get quality tech to the poor instead of throwing it in the bin or smashing it or something.
First
The PC. PCs are always cheaper than laptops- the MIT model ignored this in favour of mobility. Guess what, a 250 dollar, fully functional PC used by 5 or more children is actually much more economical than a 100 dollar laptop.
Second.
The second hand market.
I had a PC. It cost my parents a bomb when they bought it. I played warcraft on it for many years, learnt a lot. But it was just faar to outdated after 6 years. These days, the son of the man who used to do our gardening might be playing warcraft on it.
The HP Laptop I'm writing on right now is 7 years old. On the market it would fetch me 3-4-5k (60-100 dollars) max. It's ancient. I refuse to sell it though, partially because of nostalgia I feel it is worth much more than the price It'd fetch in the market- even after 7 years of purchase. Someday I'll buy a new laptop, but I will pass this on to some child somewhere who can learn from it- it'd only net me 60 dollars on the market... and it's infinitely better than this 100 dollar OLPC crap. Imagine if there was a mechanism to start this kind of a secondhand business on a huge scale.
Imagine.
Thirdly.
Why would anyone by a 100 dollar laptop when they can get a (relatively) HIGHLY functional phone for 50-60 dollars. The phone translates into communication and tangible benefits rapidly, all without a strong need for literacy- while the 100 dollar laptop without an internet subscription is simply a document/picture viewer with a calculator.
There are fairly functional 30 dollar phones in the market, connecting indians to the world like a 100 (actually almost 200) dollar laptop can't dream of.
This is a wasted effort, according to me. And mixed with the second-hand market- phone prices crash even lower. We just need to use this to get quality tech to the poor instead of throwing it in the bin or smashing it or something.
2 comments:
interesting views... I give it a thumbs up!!!
Thanks man. I've been interning in the communications sector over the summer, so I have a good perspective on data...
There are 2.5 million laptops added to India a year.
There are 15 million mobile phones being sold a month.
Even poor people prefer fully functional Rs 2400 phones over barely functional Rs 1000 phones.
Post a Comment