Politics of software looms over US$100 laptop plan

It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education.

But in the year since Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, unveiled his prototype for a US$100 laptop, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software.

Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations -- and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive alternative: turning a specially configured cellular phone into a computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.

Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates demonstrated a mockup of his proposed cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative to traditional PCs and laptops during a public discussion here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Microsoft vice president and chief technology officer Craig Mundie said in an interview that the company was still developing the idea, but that both he and Gates believed that cellphones were a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations.

"Everyone is going to have a cellphone," Mundie said, adding that in places where TVs are already common, turning a phone into a computer could simply require adding a cheap adaptor and keyboard. Microsoft has not said how much those products would cost.

Mundie said there was no firm timing for the cellphone strategy, but that the company had encouraged such innovations in the past by building prototypes for consumer electronics manufacturers.

It is not clear to what extent Negroponte's decision to use free open-source operating system software in the laptop instead of Windows spurred the alternative plan from Microsoft. But Gates has been privately bitter about it, and Mundie has been skeptical in public about the project's chance of success.

"I love what Nick is trying to do," Mundie said. "We have a lot of concerns about the sustainability of his approach."

This has not deterred Negroponte. At a private breakfast meeting about the digital divide at the forum on Saturday, Negroponte said that he had a commitment from Quanta Computer (廣達電腦) of Taiwan to manufacture the portable computers, which would initially use a processing chip from Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, California. He also said he had raised US$20 million to pay for engineering and was close to a final commitment of US$700 million from seven nations -- Thailand, Egypt, Nigeria, India, China, Brazil and Argentina -- to purchase 7 million of the laptops.

Also on Saturday, Negroponte's nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child, signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN Development Program at a news conference in Davos, under which the two will work together to develop technology and learning resources.

Negroponte is showing only a mockup of his laptop, which will have a carrying handle, built-in stereo speakers, a wireless data connection, a hand crank to generate power and a screen that is visible even in bright sunlight. He said that he hoped to be able to hand out working laptops to some participants at the forum in Davos next year.