AsiaTotal is offering free computers called IT PCs to the developing world, with a catch: the machines' keyboards are lined with hotkeys that take their users to sponsors' retail websites. Unlike the One Laptop Per Child program, the machines are proprietary, running WindowsCE instead of GNU/Linux, and they plug into the wall instead of running on hand-crank power. It has no WiFi (it uses a modem line) and therefore no way of providing mesh networking either.
It's an interesting service, but the land-line, mains power, and proprietary OS all make this less valuable as a development tool than the One Laptop Per Child device. The OLPC people talk about their device as something that will not only bring computing to poor and rural people in the developing world, but as something that will provide a platform for users to learn to program and improve on their tools — a "teach a man to fish" technology. This goes hand in hand with the WiFi and the power designs in OLPC, which allow ad-hoc groups to gather, collaborate, and work together. By sacrificing these three elements, the IT PC undermines these knock-on benefits.
The OLPC is intended as a platform for instruction and exploration of computers themselves, as an opportunity to put the means of production into the hands of users — as well as a tool for delivering and sharing information. The IT PC is just a tool for doing the latter; and for delivering users to merchants.
Jamais at WorldChanging has some good commentary on this, too.
(Thanks, Pablo!)
