Comments on: “For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished”

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:45:21 +0000

There’s a new one up: AjaxSketch. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the server’s getting hammered, because it’s taking all day to load.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:31:18 +0000

I hate Notepad. Probably because I got used to Apple’s SimpleText first, and it kicks Notepad’s arse.

By: tm

tm — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:58:12 +0000

Hmmmmm. Change that headline to “For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to ever run Microsoft WordPad just vanished”. I can see why he pitched it against word instead… ;-)

Actually I loathe word pad. Plain text and notepad for me. It’s the geek in me, I can’t help myself.

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 05:24:28 +0000

It did strike me as more akin to wordpad than word.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:36:33 +0000

Finally tried it. It’s OK, but doesn’t have smart quotes, making it no better than WordPad. That’s no bad thing — I really like WordPad — but it’s not that great, either.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 11:13:34 +0000

My feeling on the $100 laptop is that it is just another ego trip by the “new colonialists”, the aid agencies. Deciding what the Third World needs and then giving it to them is not only ridiculously arrogant, it’s also stupid: if the Soviet Union couldn’t even plan its own economy, how can we hope to plan the economies of a whole region? Support good governance and democracy, and the Third World will get clean water, medicines, cheap computers, and whatever else it needs, the same way we do: the free market.

By: tm

tm — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:27:01 +0000

>food, water and medicine.

Oh yes originally I had a comment in there about poor countries needing lots of things and them needing to be prioritised, with priorites different in different places, computers help hospitals but are less help to the average subsistence farmer are they?

But then I removed it because actually it has nothing to do with wether or not that mans comments are hype fueled and fueling nonsense based on arguments a twelve year old could drive a bus through.

Which *is* what I was making a point about in the first place… ;-)

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:10:34 +0000

Yeah, that makes sense. That you don’t have a point, I mean ;-P

By: paul

paul — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:27:07 +0000

I wish I had the link to the thread on FARK that discussed this laptop. Someone in one of these countries made a good point: that not all of the developing world is starving and in need of food, water and medicine. For example, wouldn’t they also be useful in city schools, hospitals, etc.?

I don’t really have a point, either :)

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:45:42 +0000

There’s a very compelling argument that technology-wise, the mobile phone is much more important in the developing world than a computer could ever be… I don’t really have a point :)

By: tm

tm — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:12:44 +0000

Well for a start web access is irrelevant in places where there are no phone lines. Or only very bad ones. Or only very expensive ones.

And if you do have a slow web connection then you will (should?) use it for your converstation with your scottish/canadian/angentinian farm buddy rather than some band-width hogging marketing friendly ajax nonsense. You will probably happily use some heavyweight local software to do the word processing you require.

Is now a good time to say that I just picked ‘sub-saharan africa’ because I like the way it sounds? I could just have easily picked the example of a laptop user without easy connectity. Thank goodness none of them use word very often… ;-)

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:38:37 +0000

And Web access is a force for good. One of the reasons Communism collapsed in Russia but not North Korea is that Russians had at least some access to Western information, which caused them to see that there were better ways of doing things and make demands accordingly. The North Koreans are completely cut off, largely as a result of their country not being en route to anywhere. When an African farmer is able to have online conversations with farmers in Scotland, Canada, and Argentina, how could he not get better at farming?