$100 laptops to debut with Thai kids

[kysrsoze]

(AP) -- The ambitious project to provide low-cost laptop computers to poor children around the world is about to take a small step forward. More than 500 children in Thailand are expected to receive the machines in October and November for quality testing and debugging.

The One Laptop Per Child program, which began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and now is a separate nonprofit organization, hopes to deploy 5 million to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina in 2007. Thailand's government is expected to buy 1 million in the first year.

But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that "if this project is completed" it would reach all Thai elementary students. He said each student would get a free computer "instead of books, because books will be found and can be read on computers."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/08/17/100.dollar.laptops.ap/index.html


... and MicroSlop laughed at the idea. I think this is excellent. I would love to see the textbook industry take a huge hit. That's such a scam, particularly in college.

[elliswyatt]

1. I wish I could buy one of those for my children

Nothing like pulling a crank to generate some more energy. We can actually get some exercise while sitting on our asses all day.

It's a damn shame when corporations would like to slow down progression just to make an extra buck. Textbooks should have been eliminated years ago. Wastes too many trees, and not to mention the unmentionables.

[don954]

3. I think they should start the program where you buy one for yourself

and it funds one for charity, like that crank up radio program they also have going on.

[Sherman A1]

2. I think this is a great project

I heard on NPR a week or so ago that the price will be a bit higher (I think $135 or so) and the generator will be peddle powered, but it's still Super!

[AZBlue]

4. Why isn't a Boston firm also supplying these laptops to American children?

I'm not saying don't give them to children in any of the above listed countries - but we have a LOT of children here who can't afford a computer of any kind and they go to school in a district that can't afford them either.

Is this part of the reason American children are so lagging in education when compared to the rest of the world????

[rooboy]

5. Al Qaeda reportedly distributing $100 Dell laptops as well... n/t

[Tesha]

6. People would get a real blast out of that! (NT)

[lonestarnot]

7. Aren't laptops allowed on planes with snakes?

[Akim]

8. It's a Golden Age for Education in Thailand: The Kids Are Getting...

their free laptops AND they got rid of Karr.

[rman]

9. I can't help thinking, the poorest of the poor are left to their own

devices. Millions upon millions of people are so poor that a cheap laptop, or even education, is hardly their first priority...