The $100 PC is the Next Big Thing
Om Malik wrote in Business 2.0 about the other "Next Big Thing," next to Nicholas Negroponte's famous $100 laptop.
"Three floors up in one of the city's numerous office towers, 38-year-old Rajesh Jain points to a table that holds, he'll tell you repeatedly, personal computing's next big thing.
The silver-and-black box is tiny, actually. At 8 inches by 6, it's the size of a fat paperback. But plug it into a computer monitor or a television, and Jain's boast begins to make some sense. A tap on a keyboard brings up an array of generic-looking applications you'd find on any PC--a Web browser, e-mail, and word-processing and spreadsheet programs. An MP3 player blasts "Dus Bahane," the latest hit song from Bollywood.
All that software is open-source and free. Better yet, it runs on a distant back-office server instead of the little box, which itself sips less electricity than a child's night-light, contains no hard drive, and doesn't make a sound. But that's not what gives the Nova NetPC--made by Novatium, Jain's 10-month-old startup--its industry-altering potential. It's the machine's expected price tag: $100, including a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
The $100 PC has long been considered the hurdle to clear in order to reach technology's biggest pot of gold--affordable computing for the masses in countries like Brazil, China, India, and Russia.
That's why chipmaking goliath Intel is working on cheaper processors targeted overseas, why Microsoft has begun selling a $20 stripped-down version of its Windows operating system, why giants like Advanced Micro Devices and Google have partnered with maverick MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte to develop a $100 laptop.
Stay tuned to see what happens, one way or another the $100 computer is coming soon.
"Three floors up in one of the city's numerous office towers, 38-year-old Rajesh Jain points to a table that holds, he'll tell you repeatedly, personal computing's next big thing.
The silver-and-black box is tiny, actually. At 8 inches by 6, it's the size of a fat paperback. But plug it into a computer monitor or a television, and Jain's boast begins to make some sense. A tap on a keyboard brings up an array of generic-looking applications you'd find on any PC--a Web browser, e-mail, and word-processing and spreadsheet programs. An MP3 player blasts "Dus Bahane," the latest hit song from Bollywood.
All that software is open-source and free. Better yet, it runs on a distant back-office server instead of the little box, which itself sips less electricity than a child's night-light, contains no hard drive, and doesn't make a sound. But that's not what gives the Nova NetPC--made by Novatium, Jain's 10-month-old startup--its industry-altering potential. It's the machine's expected price tag: $100, including a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
The $100 PC has long been considered the hurdle to clear in order to reach technology's biggest pot of gold--affordable computing for the masses in countries like Brazil, China, India, and Russia.
That's why chipmaking goliath Intel is working on cheaper processors targeted overseas, why Microsoft has begun selling a $20 stripped-down version of its Windows operating system, why giants like Advanced Micro Devices and Google have partnered with maverick MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte to develop a $100 laptop.
Stay tuned to see what happens, one way or another the $100 computer is coming soon.
posted by Max Hartshorne at 1:47 PM
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