The following story from the NY Times discusses the growing competition
between Nicolas Negroponte's $100 laptop initiative and Microsoft's new
proposal to low-cost Internet mobile phones for developing nations... -andy
Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone
It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded
executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers
in the developing world to help education. But in the year since
Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Media Laboratory, unveiled his prototype for a $100 laptop,
he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software.
Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed
the debate over the role of computing in poor nations — and ruffled a
few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on
including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft
executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive
alternative: turning a specially configured cellular phone into a
computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.
Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, demonstrated a mockup
of his proposed cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas earlier this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative
to traditional PC's and laptops during a public discussion here at the
annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Craig J. Mundie, Microsoft's vice president and chief technology
officer, said in an interview here that the company was still developing
the idea, but that both he and Mr. Gates believed that cellphones were a
better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing
nations. "Everyone is going to have a cellphone," Mr. Mundie said,
noting that in places where TV's are already common, turning a phone
into a computer could simply require adding a cheap adaptor and
keyboard. Microsoft has not said how much those products would cost.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/technology/30gates.html
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Andy Carvin
acarvin (at) edc . org (until Jan 31)
As of February 1:
andycarvin (at) yahoo . com
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.andycarvin.com
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