Intel proposes "Community PC" for rural India

For the second time in as many days, Intel has come up with a proposal to challenge the One Laptop Per Child project, this time offering up a plan for what the company calls the "Community PC." Unlike the $400 Edu-Wise mini-laptop Intel showed off in Brazil yesterday (pictured), the Community PC is being designed to target the specific needs of a developing region, in this case rural India. The new platform would be ruggedized, would be able to withstand extreme temperatures, and would be able to function using alternative energy sources, such as car batteries (though not, apparently, a hand crank). According to reports, Intel will work with local manufacturers in India, such as Wipro and HCL, the latter of which says that the first versions could be available within 30 days. The Community PC is expected to sell for about $550. The relatively high price is expected to be mitigated by plans to provide the computers in public-access kiosks, rather than as individually owned units, allowing entire communities to contribute to the purchase price.

[former Sega employee @ Mar 29th 2006 3:44PM]

Just what India needs, more jobs to steal from.

[Sid M @ Mar 29th 2006 4:07PM]

"Just what India needs, more jobs to steal from."


They do a better job for less money...whats wrong, not fond of capitalism?

Anyway, this will be good for western countries, cause of the extended marketing opportunities for companies. All indian villagers allready know about Pepsi and Coke, but soon they'll be getting bombarded with hundreds commercials just like us.

[kendrew @ Mar 29th 2006 4:13PM]

seems like a more logical idea than the one laptop per child. Especially hand-cranking it would take forever just to use it that every little time, this one seems like a slightly more logical solution.

sharing a computer instead of giving one to everyone. meh
just my 2 cents

[Aseem @ Mar 29th 2006 4:17PM]

To # 1, Not to sound too vicious, but your short-sighted isolationist point of view is pretty pathetic. As an American whose parents are originally from India, attitudes such as yours typically jump out at me. It reminds me of the American anti-japanese sentiment during the asian automotive boom in this country.

Competition doesn't equate to "them" stealing from "us." It simply raises the bar that everyone in the world's superpowers have to strive towards. It's true that many IT and tech support jobs have been outsourced, but that just means that we as Americans have to push our qualifications even higher to sustain our prosperity. Letting ourselves plateau and then complaining about other countries performing our jobs for less seems like a dull-minded cop out. Outsourcing works from the bottom of the job ladder upwards, eliminating those deemed replacable. It is on all of us to not become replacable. Just food for thought.

[Andre @ Mar 29th 2006 4:17PM]

Seems that firms start to understand emerging markets finally. This is a very good concept and likely to be successful. Offering shared property shemes is the only way to enter these markets. Now lets see when corruption will get under control and even more important, if people will be able to own property finally (property = ability to lend = investments = new markets the tech companies really need). Now companies need to learn that low-frill products can have a huge market, and get away from feature-benefit competition and silly branding mark-ups. Our western product hype is becoming too unreal... (although I am hooked as well ;-) )

[Jeffrey @ Mar 29th 2006 4:24PM]

Why do you need a $550 micro-laptop for a Indian Kiosk? Wouldn't a normal sized computer work just as well in a kiosk? Can't Dell already sell one of those for under $550? What am I missing here?

I think the handcrank on the olpc computer sounds great.

[R @ Mar 29th 2006 4:30PM]

No kidding #6. You don't need thise PC to work in Kiosks and compared to Negroponte's PC it is a lot more expensive.

[bufbarnaby @ Mar 29th 2006 4:37PM]

They could sell them to Americans at the kiosk inside all the Quickie Marts...Mister Simpson would gladly buy one from "Apu".

[DJ @ Mar 29th 2006 5:43PM]

Being in the kiosk business, I can say using this for a kiosk would be a huge joke.

[Luis Perez @ Mar 29th 2006 6:17PM]

I do like the original OLPC concept better... Still, I'm glad to see competition from powerful players like Intel in this area: it will only elevate the quality of this products.

btw, good point about the kiosks #6...

[Andrew @ Mar 29th 2006 7:09PM]

#6, the picture is NOT of the community PC. That's from yesterday's Intel announcement. This is something else, not the micro-laptop they were touting earlier.

As for how it's different from a $550 Dell computer, it's "ruggedize" and "able to function using alternative energy sources."

[CKE @ Mar 29th 2006 9:34PM]

OLPC must be touching the big boys' nerves. Intel & MS come out large with dismissive & mocking comments, then with lame alternatives - but at the same $500+ costs as today. My guess is they're worried that the $100 laptop catches on in the undeveloped world and then spreads to the developed world. Open software, cheap hardware, and soon their price point collapses. Can't have handcranked power. Otherwise everyone would learn how horribly inefficient those INTC cpu chips are, and how much better the alternative suppliers are.

[Jay @ Mar 29th 2006 10:19PM]

Sounds like a profit hungry corp wants a bite out of non-profit Negroponte.

[Bjorn @ Mar 29th 2006 11:23PM]

SHARE a community PC? THIS is the answer? Intel must be forgetting its own history. The only reason they exist today is that they helped the world evolve past the idiocy of shared computers, lorded over by their IT gatekeepers. If people standing in line for their turn at the keyboard was such a good idea, IBM, DEC, Unisys, Data General, Prime, Pyramid, and all those other timeshare losers would still be alive today. No, the right answer is one PC per person. If $100 is all the money that's available, then it will have to suffice. And if it ignites an laptop industry price wars race to the bottom, then that's just too bad.

[Vijay @ Mar 30th 2006 12:09AM]

What is th use if the $550 laptop becomes a museum piece for lack of electricity in a country like India. The crankable laptop with an option to run on electricity is a much more viable option.

http://india-it-pulse.blogspot.com/2006/03/now-laptops-for-indian-kids.html

VJ

[CKE @ Mar 30th 2006 1:12AM]

This project reminds me of the web-surfing internet appliances that were all the rage back in 2001. Remember the Audrey (3COM bought from Kerbango for $80M), founded to make a $499 web surfer? Or how about the Netpliance I-opener internet terminal, or the Gateway Touch Pad & others? They were founded on the premise that they could do something useful at a price that PCs could never match. They all got crushed as the mainstream PC industry steadily marched down and met their impossibly low $499 target price points without weirdo compromises. The lesson then, and now, is that it is stupid to create a whole new hardware/software world, just to hit some arbitrary low price point. If a laptop is what you want, just work the existing product costs down, until it hits the price you want. It's just a matter of time.

[wanorris @ Mar 30th 2006 1:31AM]

Yeah, this completely dusts the OLPC idea -- after all, the core idea of OLPC is to distribute digital textbooks, and when would more than one person ever want to look at a textbook at the same time?

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Mar 30th 2006 3:14AM]

Community Personal Computer??? Uh-huh...

They better to come up with proper name for the computer.

Is it personal one? or is it community one?

[E71 @ Mar 30th 2006 4:58AM]

Hmm... I doubt the average indian can afford $400, I thought these OLPCs per supposed to be around $100-$150??

[Tom @ Mar 30th 2006 2:15PM]

I just talked to an Intel rep last week at the NTEN Nonprofits and Technology conference about this computer (which they had on display). It is black and looks fairly similar to a regular desktop computer. It does have some interesting 'extra' features. It has a cable coming out of the back with connectors to hook directly to a battery which gets charged when AC power is available. It has a screen that the rep lifted up out of the case that presumably filters the air in dusty conditions. It also has a question mark button that reboots the machine into "a known good state". All of these seemed like good features that could end in machines we all buy.

The one feature I was a little concerned about was some kind of hardware/software control that the rep said would allow a lender to shut off access to the community PC if the bill wasn't paid up. I'm not so sure I like a feature that allows someone else to shut off a PC.

[Nilkanth @ Apr 3rd 2006 10:01PM]

Indians do not steal Jobs. They get it by competing market requirements. World is being everybody's playground and it is being leveled and Indians are getting their share by competing in knowledge.
Other thing rural indians are not to take jobs. These efforts are to make them computer/software users not computer/software developers. Nice work Intel, Thanks.

[Indian @ Sep 7th 2006 6:04AM]

This is just a crap.Rural India needs community toilets,drinking water and good roads.PC may be after 2050.

[Toby @ Oct 1st 2006 2:48PM]

I know this post is a bit late, but have been doing some R & D in this area, first India does not need toilets, they have survived the way they have for so long, just because we need to sit on something, does not mean the entire world does.

drinking water is also there in abundance, else there would have been a large amount of deathes by now...see what happend in Africa.

Roads, what are roads used for, to do business, or to ferry people across from one region to another...which in turn they either do to socialise or work..i.e business. Now if the PC enabled them to do this, why would they need to do this. Most villagers are quite happy within their community and have no need to travel all the way across india to meet strangers...they all want to earn a living, and feed themselves. They need to cut out the middle men who make all the profits, and make them for themselves.

The internet was to bridge this divide, it never happened in the US, in fact the internet helped those already with money to save even more by buying online...this will happen again in India, unless the medium moves quickly to rural areas. Agree there are problems with power, agree there are problems, with internet penetration.

Having said all this a $400+ PC isnt the way to go, why not use something like Nivio.com/goowy.com, and plug it together with a $100 thin client. Take this one step further rural india doesn't even need windows, it need a communication tool.

Toby

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