Intel says... "World's poorest don't want '$100 laptop': Intel"

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: mwmorph

why is eveyone assuming everyone in the 3rd world is starving, showerless and uneducated? many in ethiopia, egypt or tunisa is educated, fed and still poor by western standards. they have running water, food and other low cost necessities since in their country, a chickeen might cost the equalivent of $.10 a pound but laptop is still way over their budget, costingg maybe a month worth of wages. People in the rest of the world arent as stupid or poor as you think. stop thinking those feed the children commericals are a accurate representation of everyone else that's not american or western european.

QFT. What this thread shows more than anything is how little people know about "developing" countries. It's not coming down to a choice between water or the laptop. The people won't be buying the laptops, the governments will buy them and distribute them to schools.

still they have many necessities that would come before a laptop. health care for instance? vaccines? hell 100 dollars could buy loads of school books in such countries. its extravagant expenditure, better to lower rates of illiteracy and such before worrying about whether they have acces to a word processor😛 you can learn math and logic/science without a laptop just fine.

 

[imported_LoKe]

I could care less about that ****** laptop, but I had to point this out :

"It turns out what people are looking for is something is something that has the full functionality of a PC," he said. "Reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown up PC... not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power."

Typo, FTW!

 

[ssvegeta1010]

Originally posted by: akubi

Originally posted by: mwmorph
hand crank(think about it, it's not that hard, and you'll never have to charge it again if yoyu are decently in shape.

i believe the majority of the people here get enough exercise on their right arm.

Will they add a left handed version?

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: mwmorph

why is eveyone assuming everyone in the 3rd world is starving, showerless and uneducated? many in ethiopia, egypt or tunisa is educated, fed and still poor by western standards. they have running water, food and other low cost necessities since in their country, a chickeen might cost the equalivent of $.10 a pound but laptop is still way over their budget, costingg maybe a month worth of wages. People in the rest of the world arent as stupid or poor as you think. stop thinking those feed the children commericals are a accurate representation of everyone else that's not american or western european.

QFT. What this thread shows more than anything is how little people know about "developing" countries. It's not coming down to a choice between water or the laptop. The people won't be buying the laptops, the governments will buy them and distribute them to schools.

Agreed also.
Brazil, Thailand, and Egypt are nowhere near the level of starving, I personally don't know much about Nigeria, so I won't comment.
They have food and water, they just don't have a lot of technological stuff.
Brazil, Thailand, and Egypt all have very advanced metropolitans. It's not like Ethiopia where it's just desert and people living in mud huts. :roll:

But then again, Yahoo editors or Craig Barrett are also idiots for calling them "World's poorest" when they are nowhere near world's poorest.

A quick check on the CIA Factbook reveals that Thailand has a GDP of ~$8000, while Egypt has ~$5000
That's nowhere near world's poorest.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

 

[PingSpike]

Intel doesn't care about poor people.

 

[ABErickson]

It's not politically correct, but he's probably right. I could certainly use one for a personal media center though.

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: yowolabi
QFT. What this thread shows more than anything is how little people know about "developing" countries. It's not coming down to a choice between water or the laptop. The people won't be buying the laptops, the governments will buy them and distribute them to schools.

still they have many necessities that would come before a laptop. health care for instance? vaccines? hell 100 dollars could buy loads of school books in such countries. its extravagant expenditure, better to lower rates of illiteracy and such before worrying about whether they have acces to a word processor😛 you can learn math and logic/science without a laptop just fine.

Too much is made of literacy rates. The literacy rate in Nigeria is 68%, 75% for males. In a country where 70% of the people work in agriculture that's pretty high. The school system is excellent. Rest assured all the people that need and want to read and write have the opportunity. In the cities which a majority of the population live, literacy is at a much higher percentage than the overall numbers i stated. And frankly, if you live all your life in a small town, working manually, literacy is overrated. Giving those who are in school the ability to get familiar with some of the technology the rest of the world uses and connecting them to the internet will help to advance the country as a whole.

The problems with health care are far more complicated than not putting enough money into the system. There are a lot of children in the united states without health insurance and access to optimum care. Would you suggest that we stop putting computers in schools until that's all taken care of? No, because that wouldn't make a difference. There, like here, it's not an either/or situation.


The arrogance of people who know little about these countries saying that the laptops are a bad investment is astounding. Rest assured the people making the buying decisions in the countries are at least as capable of making intelligent decisions as you, and have put far more research into whether the expense is worth the investment. The fact that they're buying them is evidence enough that it is.

 

[Shawn]

They're just mad that they are selling a computer for less than one of their processors cost.

 

[Looney]

Do you guys even read the articles? The $100 is targetted at schools and governments. And if they're attending schools, they're probably already eating. Not everybody who will be using these $100 laptops are starving on the streets.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: yowolabi
Too much is made of literacy rates. The literacy rate in Nigeria is 68%, 75% for males. In a country where 70% of the people work in agriculture that's pretty high. The school system is excellent. Rest assured all the people that need and want to read and write have the opportunity. In the cities which a majority of the population live, literacy is at a much higher percentage than the overall numbers i stated. And frankly, if you live all your life in a small town, working manually, literacy is overrated. Giving those who are in school the ability to get familiar with some of the technology the rest of the world uses and connecting them to the internet will help to advance the country as a whole.

The problems with health care are far more complicated than not putting enough money into the system. There are a lot of children in the united states without health insurance and access to optimum care. Would you suggest that we stop putting computers in schools until that's all taken care of? No, because that wouldn't make a difference. There, like here, it's not an either/or situation.


The arrogance of people who know little about these countries saying that the laptops are a bad investment is astounding. Rest assured the people making the buying decisions in the countries are at least as capable of making intelligent decisions as you, and have put far more research into whether the expense is worth the investment. The fact that they're buying them is evidence enough that it is.

What yowolabi said. :thumbsup:

 

[PingSpike]

BTW, the article says these cost $200 if it were you and me buying them.

 

[phisrow]

The idea that a device running Linux lacks applications amuses me greatly.