Imagine a world where the next generation of computers isn't a hundred times faster and a lot more expensive than the one you just bought. What if they were designed without all the bells and whistles to be just a little more practical at a fraction of the price? A small Chinese firm has made good on the not-so-new idea that the bulk of personal computing can be done for much less money.
YellowSheepRiver Municator is selling a new Linux-based desktop for about $150. Like Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child project, makers of the Municator say they want to banish the digital divide.
"As (the) OLPC project is for children, Municator is for all people with such needs – the scope is a little bit different," said David Lin, executive director at YellowSheepRiver, in an e-mail. "Although the target end users are different, one point (that) remains the same is that both OLPC and Municator would like to promote computers to people all over the world with a reasonable and affordable price."
The Municator packs a 40-GB hard drive, a DVD drive, Wi-Fi, 256 MB of RAM and a 400/800-MHz Godson processor. It won't let you edit your next feature film, and you won't have much luck trashing your friends in a communal bout of Halo 2, but it easily runs a word-processing suite called Red Office, Firefox, Skype, instant messenger and a multimedia player.
The mini-computer consumes very little power, weighs only 1.43 pounds and has video ports that will allow it to hook up to an ordinary television set.
In a – video demonstrating the machine's capabilities, Philip Hui, YellowSheepRiver's chief knowledge officer, says the Municator will be 99 percent compatible with Microsoft Office.
Proprietary operating systems like Microsoft Windows drive up costs beyond the reach of most people in China, so the company adopted the slogan "Say no to Wintel" and opted for open source. It adapted Linux to the Municator's indigenous processor and released the Thinix 3.0 operating system with a user-friendly interface.
The Municator was announced at a conference in Hanover, Germany, in March. Bloggers immediately compared the computer to OLPC.
The MIT-affiliated effort has had the technology in place for a $100 laptop since January 2005 but has yet to begin production because the program needs 5 million to 10 million advance orders before factories will begin to churn them out. The Municator, however, is ready to go.
Negroponte was not impressed by the Municator. "A $150 desktop is not technically challenging," he said in an e-mail. "If someone can make a $100 laptop, be our guest. We will buy from them."
Despite the differences in the end product – OLPC's laptop is powered by a hand crank, while the desktop plugs into a wall – the goals of the two projects are similar. Both the Municator and OLPC originated when scientists and computer engineers started thinking of ways to put computers into the hands of people who couldn't afford them.
Most people in the world find even stripped-down computers prohibitively expensive, and every new effort to minimize costs is a step toward tearing down digital barriers. "It's a humanitarian effort, so nobody is a competitor," said Negroponte.
Initially, YellowSheepRiver will promote the Municator in the rural area of western China as well as Southeast Asia, Lin said. The company's goal is to sell 500,000 machines this year.
