$100 laptop advocates fight back

silicon.com readers have hit out at a recent CIO Jury which labelled the $100 laptop project "fundamentally flawed" - slamming the Jury's criticism of a project that's polarising both technological and political opinion.

Even Nicholas Negroponte, head of the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC), which produces the low-cost devices, weighed in on the subject.

He hit out at criticism by the Jury that the device itself was limited by its functionality and buyer's infrastructure. "I urge you look carefully at our specs and examine why open source is 50 per cent of the world's server market. Our laptop will not only be very fast and not limited, it will have three features no other laptop has: sun-light readable mode, human power option, and mesh network built in. 'Limited' is hardly the right word," he said.

He added computing equipment is just as necessary as writing tools for children: "I wonder if you would advocate one pencil per classroom, or a special room for all pencils, called a 'writing room'."

Reader Ibukunolu Alao Babajide of Tanzania also highlighted what he believes is a short-sighted approach to adopting new technology in developing nations.

"God knows how many toys and gadgets fired the imaginations of the Bill Gates and Michael Dells of this world. We may never know but it is a disservice to the deprived African child, or Indian child, for some overfed and unimaginative and challenged thinkers to sit in their cosy offices far removed from the realities of the lives of deprived children to pontificate loosely against the $100 laptop."

For Nicholas Sarbonnier, the importance of the $100 laptop is more technological than pedagogical. By opting for the Linux operating system, he said, countries can strike a blow against the dominance of Wintel machines.

Say what?

See all the reader feedback on the CIO Jury's vote here.

He said: "It's about either you let capitalism - thus Intel and Microsoft - continue to have a monopoly on computers. Or you get some big companies together as the ones behind OLPC, and you rebuild a computer and the OS in a way so it is as cheap and as fast as possible."

Charges of short-sightedness were also levelled at OLPC, the foundation behind the $100 laptop project, by reader Tim Wire. According to Wire, without a wider tech push, the devices won't make a dent in solving the developing world's educational problems.

He said: "The $100 project is rather like buying scanners for hospitals. It completely ignores the cost of running the background infrastructure - or maybe it doesn't and provides Western companies with a sponge to mop up aid dollars to the wider detriment of the presumed beneficiaries."

One anonymous reader, an IT manager from Letchworth, agreed that without other key elements in place - such as teacher training - the scheme could hit some major hurdles.

"If an educational establishment is unable to incorporate computers into its lessons because the teachers have little ideas of how to use them, how is giving a child a computer of its own going to help?"