LowCostComputing
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Intel tactically donates a thousand laptops to Vietnam
In most situations, a donation of a thousand laptops is a pretty awesome thing. But when the donation comes from Intel, a multi-billion dollar corporation with an interest in promoting its low cost laptop line, and the recipient is Vietnam, a nation of 85 million living on less than $3,500 per capita, it'd be a long shot to say that the donation came out of the goodness of the company's heart. Education minister Nguyen Thien Nhan seems to be happy enough with the deal, saying that Vietnam recognizes the value of technology in the classroom (even if America doesn't). Frankly, we don't buy the PR line: it's not sustainable for Intel to constantly "give away" their machines, so the payoff is inevitably going to be some sort of lock-in by getting there first. Even if the concept of laptops in schools isn't flawed, this isn't the way to go about getting them into the hands of students -- let alone students from a country that is listed in the mid-hundreds on the GDP rankings.[Via The Inquirer]
Red Hat plans low cost Linux "Global Desktop" OS
What with the OLPC project and Intel planning to make cheap computing for the masses, we've got to wonder what the world was playing at up until now. As the horribly termed "emerging markets" start to emerge, Red Hat is getting into the low cost computing game with the "Red Hat Global Desktop," a low requirement operating system and software package which was announced at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego. The system will include a range of productivity applications, management systems that work on a scale of 10 to 10,000, plus what the Red Hat guys call a "modern user experience": fingers crossed that means no command lines. The Global Desktop is part of Red Hat's involvement with the One Laptop Per Child project, but it'll also be supported on Intel's range of lower specification and cost computer line, if your wish is to replace Microsoft's little OS.[Via The Inquirer]
