Bringing the Internet To the Whole World, by Jonathan Krim

Friday, April 29, 2005

AMD, known mostly as a computer chip maker perennially in the shadow of giant Intel Corp., recently unveiled a pared-down personal computer that costs roughly $200 in an ambitious drive to get computers with Internet access into the hands of 50 percent of the world’s population by 2015.
Trying to bridge the digital divide with low-cost computers is neither a new idea nor one that has been particularly successful.
A handheld machine developed in India called Simputer is attracting only a fraction of the users its makers expected. A group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on creating laptops that would be bought by governments for $100 apiece and given to needy residents, but some analysts question the initiative’s viability.
AMD’s strategy targets the hundreds of millions of people who earn $5,000 to $10,000 per year. To reach them, the company is challenging the traditional way personal computers are designed and distributed.
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Source: The Washington Post