Hehehe, I had forgot completely about the Z80 computers.
Let's put it this way: _every_ home has a TV. Add mesh networking and you can actually wire-up whole cities with 20 bucks devices. This is soo cool.
Ok, I'm not saying this is what it does. For what we know, it could be completely crap. But, just imagine:
- You have 30 dollar box - so you can put about as much brain-power in it as a router.
- For really poor countries, LCD screens are a waste when you have TV. So, you just throw in a TV-out, which was cheap 20 years ago.
- From my experience in wiring relatively "wild" places, if you have boxes plugged in a power socket, the people will put the actual wire the place themselves. That's if you don't have OLPC's mesh networking.
This stupid-looking white box could do most for developing countries then anything else in the last 10 years. Except of course mobile phones.
There are many reasons, mostly to do with skewed priorities. I'll describe one of ways priorities get skewed. There is a disproportionately large film and TV industry with a lot of political backing which are interested in getting TV into as many homes as possible. In the south Indian state I come from, one of the election promises by the current chief minister (somewhat equivalent to a governor in US) was a free TV for every family. The same minister owns a private TV Network. What best way to get more audience than use government money...
I bet you have a computer though. I also didn't have a TV for about 6 months, I never bothered to buy a new one after my last one broke. But I would guess that anyone that doesn't have a computer already is VERY likely to own a TV.
I don't understand why is it a huge disappointment. My fascination with computers started with an old programmable calculator my dad brought home once. And its price was more than $10 which was still OK for Russia in early 90s.
I could have died of happiness back then if I could put my hands on a $30 worth of 2009 hardware in that little plastic box.
When I first heard about this I wondered what a 10$ laptop could be. I pictured a TI-86 graphing calculator with network access, and a VGA or TV out. Thinking back on what I did with my graphing calculator in high school I pictured a whole new generation of software hackers vs code monkeys that might start coming out of India and other developing nations.
The problem is from the picture it's missing the keys. So it's hard to think of someone hacking a way on the thing when there is no way to input new data while waiting for a bus. If we are thinking about a cheep computer then a commodore 64 for 10$ could be easy to build but that's not what they are doing.
Skeptics argued that it can't be $10, as even a screen would cost more than that.
I wonder why a $10 laptop can't be, essentially, a wristwatch or a calculator instead of an iPhone or a netbook?
Linux will run on almost anything, a membrane keyboard (even a mobile phone 12-key pad using SMS text style input), and a small amount of memory... could you get enough hardware to run linux and have some kind of UI for ten bucks?
One guy hacked one (different model), and found its CPU was a 6502 (same as Apple 2e). I don't think linux runs on that, as no memory protection.
http://spritesmods.com/?art=picframe&page=1
Absolutely. IMO the thing to model them after would be the PIM (personal information manager) pseudo-computers of the early 1990s. Segmented or possibly coarse dot matrix LCD (2-4 lines, ~40 characters), and a special (read: charity) deal with a chip manufacturer for a modest but modern microcontroller, such as an Atmel AVR32, which Digikey has at unit prices around $7. Bulk pricing for a large order of these direct from the manufacturer might be drastically cheaper (~$5? $3, even?)
They'll run linux, but I'm not sure how to get networking into them. Wireless might be a bit ambitious (802.11 is clearly out of the question). Maybe with a simple GPIO pin you could control a small AM transmitter/receiver pair, with the intent of transmitting ~300bps. For the money it might make sense to just put a couple external metal contacts on it and run wires to each desk -- which would also solve powering it.
Ok, I'm not saying this is what it does. For what we know, it could be completely crap. But, just imagine:
- You have 30 dollar box - so you can put about as much brain-power in it as a router.
- For really poor countries, LCD screens are a waste when you have TV. So, you just throw in a TV-out, which was cheap 20 years ago.
- From my experience in wiring relatively "wild" places, if you have boxes plugged in a power socket, the people will put the actual wire the place themselves. That's if you don't have OLPC's mesh networking.
This stupid-looking white box could do most for developing countries then anything else in the last 10 years. Except of course mobile phones.