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Third World PC costs $100 - community computing, anyone?

It's probably true that individuals in very poor communities are more likely to buy mobile phones than personal computers; but that doesn't mean that Nicholas Negroponte's planned design won't sell to its chosen market: third world Governments.

The machine was greeted with only moderate enthusiasm by pundits like  Peter Rojas at Engadget. But he said he could see why it's not being sold as a consumer item: "Given how expensive even a $100 PC would be for the poorest two billion people on the planet, we’re guessing most people in the developing world, if they had to buy something piece of technology, would rather spend their money on a cellphone."

This may (unusually for Rojas) be missing the point. Where technology like the VIA mini-ITX design and the MIT Media lab box are seen as "personal" computers in wealthier cities, they can form the basis of a cheap - and low-power - community server for isolated subsistence communities.

Add something like the  Locustworld Mesh telephony software (based on http://www.asterisk.org/ Asterisk standards) and you have an Internet resource, a phone system, and a local hub for dual-standard UMA phones.

Negroponte says the minimum order will be for a million units. That cuts down the number of people who'd be interested, for sure; and his joint venture (who with?) won't sell to anybody except Governments. That cuts down the market again. But it still leaves a lot of small Chinese communities where such a device would make a big impact.