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$100 PC Pledges Fail To Meet Minimum

Posted by kdawson on Wed Nov 01, 2006 06:53 AM
from the limits-of-generosity dept.
Education Hardware
bobthemuse writes, "Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop PC was demonstrated back in May, and a PledgeBank was set up: the goal was to get 100,000 people to purchase an OLPC for $300, allowing the project to send two of the devices to the proposed users. Today the pledge ended and only 3,678 people had signed up." It looks like a mention in Slashback a few weeks ago gave a boost to the effort, but not a big enough one.
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  • I saw this when it was announced and tbh was put off by this:

    "I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 other will too."

    I would gladly sign up for a $100 laptop if it cost $100.
    I realise everything about starting up and getting the ball rolling but I cannot waste an additional $200.

    Its that simple.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nachmore (922129)
      I did - because I think that the cause is justified.

      The extra money would have (hopefully) meant an extra two computers distributed, not to mention the fact that I would have become the proud owner of one of the first of these little gadgets. Of course, my personal gain is secondary...

      Maybe the target was set a little too high - are there really that many people out there that care?

    • I don't see why they didn't make it $200 instead of $300 to start. $200 is still cheaper than just about any PC available. Sure you only get 1 donated OLPC, but if you get over twice as many people to do it, you end up with more OLPCs donated overall. I could be wrong though. Maybe people wouldn't even do it in great numbers at that price.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Salvance (1014001) *
        $200 for a tiny laptop with a crank for charging still isn't a very good deal. Look on ebay and you get can far more powerful used laptops for the same price, or you can get $50 desktops (again, used of course) that would run circles around this odd device.

        If not a single industrialized or developing nation would support creating the devices, why should we? The concept was pretty decent, but laptops are not going to solve third world problems. Depending on the African nation, they need teachers who wo
        • Look on ebay...

          That's not the point. Used notebooks aren't a sustainable plan in large volumes. It's not very maintainable, either, with replacement parts also being over seas. If you do this, you get an unsupportable mess of different notebook models, the steps to repairing each one is different, with different replacement parts needed to fix different models.

          The point that is often missed is that the education could have significantly reduced the social ills you described. In fact, in my area, there

          • Re:Why I didn't (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Shadowmist (57488) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @08:52AM (#16671955)
            And a kid who's starving won't be taking the time to read. Even Bill Gates Sr. figured this out when some time ago he took a trip to Africa and was shown a poor village's proudest posession, a single workstation hooked up to the village's sole electrical outlet. He realised that what village needed most at that time was not a computer, but a refrigerator.

            Tech toys like these have theire place and moment can help but the basick foundation of the pyramid must be built first. You need decent health, places to sleep, and a dependable food supply before cranking laptops become not only a luxury but a dangerous drain on time and energy that must be spent on survival.

            Africa and the Third World aren't just poorer versions of your hometown, they're places in deep distress with a profound lack of the basic neccessities of life, and sweeping plagues which are taking an enormous toll. These are the problems that must be solved FIRST and foremost before the higher goals can be tackled.
            • Exactly...Don't you think that $300 (for the $100 laptop - someone want to explain this??) could go for, oh I don't know, food, medicine, shelter, water purifying machines?? What good is a laptop if you are starving and have dysentery? (Unless you somehow got an ad-hoc wireless connection to the internet, and you now may actually know what you are dying from...) Technology is not a panacea - giving underdeveloped countries laptops isn't going to magically launch them into the 21st century.. If you want to g
        • $200 for a tiny laptop with a crank for charging ... Spending 6 month's salary on a windup laptop

          It DOESN'T HAVE A FUCKING CRANK.

          See OLPC hardware [laptop.org]. The crank was one suggestion long ago; and it would only have been a backup when there wasn't any mains power.

          Think of another excuse.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jotok (728554)
          For about the billionth time...the $100 laptop isn't intended to let kids in a war zone check their gmail. It's intended for areas where a little cheap, portable, and durable computing power would go a long way. Think of it not as an attempt to solve the worst problems, but maybe the fifth-worst problem.

          That said, I'm not wholly convinced about the new device for the reasons you stated. I run a charity wherein I refurbish castoffs and give them to high school kids in poor neighborhoods--in about a month
    • It sounds to me like the extra $200 is to buy laptops for two deserving third world children. I.e., it's charity.

      I'm still not going to do it though. For that $200 I can (and do) pay for the schooling for a child or two for a year. I didn't think Clinton's initiative of one computer per classroom was the solution to America's education problems and I sure don't think OLPC is a good use of resources for the third world. As far as I can tell, it's just a stunt that will truly benefit very few people.
    • But it's not a waste, is it, doesn't it buy two extras for children that need notebook computers?
    • Not to mention, you can get a much, much better Dell laptop for not much more than that. I got one for like $500, and that was with a gig of RAM and a 1.8GHz Pentium M. While I might have gotten the laptop if it was $100, I don't really care for the cause. I think Negroponte should think about fixing the fucked-up US education system before he starts screwing with those of other countries. Almost every school in the US has tons of computers, but somehow the quality of education has gone down rather than
  • Given that there were only a couple of hundred more subscribers after the article and the whole thing fell disasterously short of its target quota.

    While the project has its merits I wonder if the lack of interest shown by the public at large and quite importantly by the slashdot audience is an indicator of a project doomed to failure by apathy.

    • indicator of a project doomed to failure by apathy.

      Well, I don't think it's been advertised terribly well.
      Two points are

      • The tax writeoff aspect needs to be emphasized. While we can all get a warm fuzzy in the midriff about the kids, it's that pleasure jolt in the wallet from getting mugged by the taxman that affects behavior.
      • The driver issue bears review. http://lwn.net/Articles/203562/#Comments [lwn.net] explores some of the issues in better detail than anywhere else I've seen. Let's see a contribution bount
    • I feel like I was really out of the loop on this. I don't always have my finger and thumb on the pulse of technological issues, but I make an earnest attempt to. I knew about the $100 laptops from a long time ago, but this is the first I've heard of the $300 charity versions. But you know, I'm not some kind of Everyman here, just one man. Maybe my neighbors knew all about this and each bought two (although after looking at the final pledge numbers, that seems unlikely). So whatever kind of advertising
      • I feel like I was really out of the loop on this. I don't always have my finger and thumb on the pulse of technological issues, but I make an earnest attempt to. I knew about the $100 laptops from a long time ago, but this is the first I've heard of the $300 charity versions.

        Me too.

        I wish I had heard about this earlier. I would definitely have pledged.
    • Why could it not just be doomed to failure because it was a really silly and poorly-conceived plan by an ivory-tower egghead obsessed with "being digital" to the exclusion of all else including common sense? No one has convinced me of the value of a PC in the education of American and European grade school children, let alone in the third world. Buy them books, pencils, and notepads, and be sure they are fed and loved. Small out-of-pocket cost, huge and time-honored return on investment.

  • Only if 99,999 other will too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by biocute (936687) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:07AM (#16671131) Homepage
    I wonder if there is a special reason that requires 100,000 participants (that is, 200,000 OLPC, 300,000 altogether).

    Does that mean they can't produce and sell these laptop if there were only 5,000 orders?
  • I'd say that this is fairly conclusive proof of a doomed project. Buy a $100 for $300, who on earth would sign up for that ?

  • Slashdot effect?! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SpaghettiPattern (609814) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:12AM (#16671151)
    You'd say PledgeBank would run into a problem in handling all the applications by all them righteous slashdotters. You know, the geeks that get bullied, kicked and bashed because they read books, are proficient with computers, value educated discussion and surely would want to give poorer people a shot at being educated.

    ... But they didn't ...

    There must a whole bunch of cheapskates here on slashdot.

    FYI, I pledged for three. Then, for a short time, I contemplated to let them keep the third PC as well. But that is betrayal because you shouldn't dump second grade stuff onto the 3rd world. I decided to actually use the third one seriously and to contribute at least with bug reports.

    Hell, I even convinced my not-so-techie brother to pledge and he did. And also consider that we're not from the USA. We're from a part of the world where USD 300 is a higher percentage of our nett income.
    • I don't like where you're coming from at all. Hey, congratulations, you are morally superior to us in every way. And don't forget, it is only when you lord news of your own charity over us that we can be shamed by it.

    • You'd say PledgeBank would run into a problem in handling all the applications by all them righteous slashdotters. You know, the geeks that get bullied, kicked and bashed because they read books, are proficient with computers, value educated discussion and surely would want to give poorer people a shot at being educated. ... But they didn't ...

      There must a whole bunch of cheapskates here on slashdot.

      Well, how can I put this politely? Hmmm... Fuck you!

      Instead of paying $300 for having two (2) substandard $1

      • Nor do I believe that dumping things that we wouldn't use on the 3rd world is going to make the [technology] gap disappear -- au contraire. I'd rather see them receive one $1000 laptop than ten $100 ones that aren't similar to what the rest of the world use. "Better than what they have" isn't a valid argument, as it serves to keep the gap.

        Developing countries cannot maintain a "fleet" of up-to-date computers, as every PC is rendered obsolete by "progress" within 3 years. "what the rest of the world uses"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pla (258480)
      There must a whole bunch of cheapskates here on slashdot.

      If by "cheap" you mean "not stupid enough to pay $300 for a $100 product", then yeah, you can count me as one of the cheapskates.

      Now, I really wouldn't mind getting one of these. I'd even pay a reasonable premium to send some to the actual target market (like perhaps 20-50% extra. But NOT 200% over list just because someone combines the magical phrases "for kids/charity/third world".


      Perhaps most importantly, computers don't actually help kid
      • Well, if they only end up with 5 or 10 laptops delivered to each school in a country, that's still a lot better than no computers. Maybe they should have called it the Five Laptops Per School program.
      • The WOW strawman is obviously that (or you're unfamiliar with the specs on these things; they're not going to be running WOW). As for your counterproposal, "a chance to see" a computer (or use one in a central location) doesn't have nearly the potential impact of having one's own equipment which one can use for research or communication on a day-to-day basis or tinker with to gain understanding of how it works.

        Now, getting more to the point: Communications infrastructure is a core element in having an effec
      • Money so the 3rd world kids can get addicted to WOW, no way.

        WOW won't run on these. They don't meet the hardware spec, let alone they don't run Windows abd will very likely not have relisble net access.

  • Not a lack of interest (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zouden (232738) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:22AM (#16671215)
    Rather, an unrealistic expectation. It's difficult to sell 100,000 of anything, let alone through a grassroots campaign like this.
    • Let me be the first to say: if you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type
  • ...and look out for the stampede.
    • Actually, change it to $299. You might not get the whole stampede, but if you got more than 2/3 of a stampede, you'd get get more gross revenue than

      Probably you wouldn't get 2/3 of a stampede; you might need to price it at $249 to do that. However, you have to look at net, not gross. Suppose it currently costs you $100 to make the device; you make twice as much per unit at $299 as you do at $200. So you only need more than half a stampeded to get ahead.

      This doesn't count the non-tangible but very real
  • In other words, the "One $100 dollar laptop per nerd" prgoram is a failure, because the laptop actually costs $300. Because of this failure, the kids in Africa will now be forced to learn with books, paper, and pencils.

  • Pledging? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ronanbear (924575) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:35AM (#16671321)
    Pledging really isn't something that most people like doing. Outside of the wider public this project has been remarkably quiet. I don't even remember seeing the Pledgebank.

    Sign up to buy a computer and then a few months later find out later whether you'll be able to buy one. It's really inconvenient. Such a project requires wider grassroots adoption and the support of a lot of people. The amount of money pledged was huge.

    100,000 computers at $300 a pop is $30m. Making the effort part of telethon's and charity drives might have been much more effective than just having a website where you can't even buy one.

    It's a cheap simple computer. It might have found a good audience in non geeks interested in trading up from old Windows 98 boxes. It's the one laptop per child project. For selling it in the 1st world it was marketed wrong. It might have done very well if sold as something to get your kid for Christmas instead of an Xbox 360 or an iPod where most of the money goes to charity. Meanwhile the iPod nano Red will sell in huge numbers with a lower (but very decent) amount going to charity.

  • Frivolity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dachannien (617929) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:38AM (#16671339)
    I think one reason why there's not much enthusiasm about this program is a difference of philosophies in how to educate the world's children. Generally speaking, people would rather spend $100 to buy books for a bunch of underprivileged children rather than spend it to buy one computer for one child. The applications of computers in grade school education in the US are kind of fuzzy, which makes it difficult to see how useful they would be in a less industrialized society.

    Besides all that, there are numerous other costs associated with making these laptops useful. For example, there's maintenance, theft replacement, training for teachers, and development of a standard computer-based curriculum. Many of these costs are recurring, which means that in the long run, these kids could be worse off from having so much money being tossed onto the bonfire trying to maintain a computer-based education program.

  • At $300 a pop in a first world country where computers are nearly ubiquitous, their failure to sell isn't really anything of note. It's a failed gadget launch (and a highly underpublicised one, this is the first I've heard of the $300 offer, not that I've got 3 C-notes kicking around)

    This doesn't say anything about whether or not the $100 laptops are a good way of spending money to benefit the third world. Just look at how successful cellphones have been at connecting communities in Africa. That's been a

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by colmore (56499)
      Ahhh, wait a minute, before everyone starts harping on this, notice:

      This pledgebank wasn't started by the project and isn't connected to them at all. This is nothing more than a well-intentioned and failed internet petition.

      Really, nothing to see here.
  • ... a tax deduction for the $200 difference would have been a help, at least in the U.S.
    • Yeah, 'cause what we really nead here in the US, with an effective deficit of 450-800B/yr (depending on how you count SS), is a way for people who can afford a $300 toy to pay less tax.

      Thanks.

      (BTW - I want a tax deduction, too. But I'd rather see the spending drop first.)

  • Don't overblow it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CptnHarlock (136449) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:50AM (#16671423) Homepage
    This is NOT a failiure of the project itself. It's a failet net-pledge only. The goal of which was pretty unrealistic anyway. I still signed up though... :) ... one can always hope I thought. Anyway:

    This is NOT a failiure of the "One Laptop Per Child" project.

    Cheers...

  • $120 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rlp (11898) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @07:52AM (#16671439)
    Sell it to slashdot users for $120 (mfg makes a small profit). That way some of the buyers will end up using it to develop OSS educational SW for it. They should also color code the units; say green for students, blue for teachers, and red for developers (the $120 units). That way if you see a green unit for sale on E-bay - you (and E-bay) knows it's stolen property.
  • Why buy a crippled laptop when you can, for not much more, get one with a lot more power and compatiblity? The $300 price point was way too high. Even if you want a Linux laptop, it's a lot of money to pony up for a system with so little power and technical specs. Could I even run some of the standard Linux programs like MySql and Apache on it w/o choking? Don't get me wrong. It's an amazing machine, but it was designed for a world where power, money, and network infrastructure are rare and valuble commodit
  • I was waiting to be told when I could buy one. If this was a big campaign, they sure fell short in getting the broader word out. I didn't even realize you could order them yet.

    I also didn't realize that, and don't understand why, it's a "limited time" thing. Why not just leave it open? I would have bought one. I'd do it right now if it was still available.

  • I emailed them when the OLPC first went public, suggesting a buy-two-get-one thing. I was ready to pledge, but I never heard about it. Nowhere, nowhen, nohow.

    If people don't know, they can't pledge.

    HAL

  • New and experimental Pledge (Score:4, Informative)

    by TomSteinberg (1021177) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @08:07AM (#16671555)
    I'm part of the team that runs PledgeBank. You might be interested in this experimental Pledge I just put up for people who still want to be involved with OLPC, but on a more realistic and local level. http://www.pledgebank.com/olpchackers [pledgebank.com] The Pledge is unique because it uses a new feature that isn't in general circulation on PledgeBank yet, cascading Pledges. These are global pledges which you sign up to locally, making a mini version of each pledge with a group of other people who live near you. Take a look, even if you don't sign up, and please give us feedback. This is very much an alpha feature, although the pledge is real.

  • The whole thing failed for very sound reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by McFadden (809368) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @08:31AM (#16671761) Homepage
    We in rich countries don't give laptops to every one of our kids, yet we seem to think we can tell poor countries that this is what they need. I think of a dozen things that would benefit the poor way before we start thinking about fucking PCs.

  • Stupidest idea in a looong time! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ancient_Hacker (751168) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @08:46AM (#16671901)
    $100 laptop is a terrible way to burn money.

    In case you havent been out in the boonies, if you take the chicken bus from any big city in 95% of the countries of the world, out an hour or so, you get to villages where there are no schools, no paper, no pencils, no books, no nuttin!

    Those people need:

    1. A SCHOOL! -- meaning four walls and a roof.
    2. A TEACHER! -- meaning somebody that can read nad write and add numbers.
    3. PAPER! -- just the cheapest grade.
    4. PENCILS! -- yes, they do not have pencils.
    5. BOOKS! --
    6. BREAKFAST!

      They do not need: money wasted on what random first-worlders thing third worlders need.

    • Yeah. Bill Gates sponsoring a Linux project. He may be giving most of his money away but he's not that charitable.

      (Microsoft did of course offer their own operating system license free as did Apple)

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