2007年4月12日100美元笔记本电脑的圣杯

2004年，当麻省理工学院(MIT)的一群教育和技术专家表示，将为世界上的贫穷儿童制造100美元一台的笔记本电脑，以消除数字时代的隔阂的时候，他们遭到了人们的嘲笑。

When a team of education and technology experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in 2004 they were going to overcome the digital divide by making a $100 laptop for the poor children of the world, they were ridiculed.

技术行业的高管们表示，成本"不可能"出现如此程度的急剧下降。即便是将这些专家视为理想主义者的人也认为，除了慈善用途，"每个儿童一台笔记本电脑"(one laptop per child, 简称 OLPC)计划没有未来。

Technology executives said such an extreme drop in cost would be "impossible". Even those who saw the team as visionaries thought the "one laptop per child" (OLPC) project had no future beyond charity.

时隔3年之后，OLPC计划似乎正在改变着电脑行业--尽管并非以该计划创始者们最初设想的方式。电脑行业已经发现了穷人的营销宣传力，并且越来越相信，全球绝大多数尚未拥有电脑的人口，将成为电脑行业未来增长的主要推动力之一。

Three years later, OLPC appears to be changing the computer industry, although not in the way its founders imagined. The sector has discovered the marketing power of the poor and has increasingly come to believe that the vast majority of the world's population that does not already possess a computer will be one of the main drivers of future growth.

"目前，半导体人口仅限于金字塔顶端的8亿人，"台湾资讯工业策进会(Institute for Information Industry)研究员秦素霞(Cynthia Chyn)表示，"该行业正在为接下来的10亿人寻找合适的电脑。"台湾资讯工业策进会是由台湾政府资助的一个智囊机构。

"Currently the semiconductor population is limited to the 800m people at the top of the pyramid," says Cynthia Chyn, a researcher at the Institute for Information Industry, a Taiwanese government-funded think-tank. "The industry is in search of a PC for the next billion."

在过去一年，全球硬件和软件企业已宣布了一系列针对这一群体的新举措。英特尔(Intel)曾是OLPC计划最猛烈的批评者，但现在已经开发了瞄准第三世界学生的低成本电脑，其中包括"Classmate"台式机和"Eduwise"笔记本电脑。

Over the past year, global hardware and software companies have announced initiatives aimed at this group. Intel, one of OLPC's fiercest critics, has developed low-cost computers aimed at students in third-world countries, including the "Classmate" PC and the "Eduwise" laptop.

其竞争对手AMD已保证，通过一个称为"个人互联网连接器"(Personal Internet Communicator)的设备，在2015年之前让全球半数人口能够上网。微软(Microsoft)支持在发展中国家的农村地区建立公用电脑亭，那里的村民只要支付使用费，便可分享一台电脑。

Its rival AMD has pledged to get half the world's population online by 2015 with a device called the Personal Internet Communicator. Microsoft is supporting the establishment of kiosks in villages in developing countries, where residents would share a computer and just pay for usage.

分析人士认为，其中的部分行动只是公关活动，属于防御性举措，以确保一旦这些国家转变为真正的市场，各企业的品牌或技术能在那里获得一个立足点。

Analysts see some of these moves as no more than public relations campaigns, defensive attempts to make sure that the respective company's brand or technology has a foot in the door once these countries turn into real markets.

但是，各企业最近已开始采取一些既非慈善又非公关的步骤：上月，全球第二大电脑公司戴尔(Dell)在中国发布了一台售价只有336美元的台式电脑，比该公司此前售价最低的电脑还要便宜60%以上。

But recently companies have started taking steps that are neither charity nor PR: Dell, the world's number two computer company, launched a desktop computer in China last month that sells for as little as $336, more than 60 per cent below the price tag of its previously cheapest machine.

全球最大的笔记本电脑合同制造商广达电脑(Quanta Computer)表示，该公司将于明年开始制造售价仅为200美元的笔记本电脑。该公司还将制造OLPC电脑，首批将于今年夏天开始制造。

Quanta Computer, the world's largest contract manufacturer of notebook computers, says next year it will start making laptops that will sell for only $200. It is also making the OLPC, the first shipments of which are due to be made this summer.

大多数这些行动之所以可以实现，是因为OLPC计划迫使许多企业去开发尽可能廉价的笔记本电脑。

Most of these moves have been made possible because the OLPC project forced a group of companies to develop a laptop with the goal of making it as cheap as possible.

结果比批评人士的想像要容易得多。通过使用廉价的液晶显示器，省去硬盘，并在机器上运行开放源代码软件而非微软的Windows，成本得到了降低。

This turned out to be far easier than critics had suggested. Costs were cut by using a cheaper form of liquid crystal display, leaving out the hard disk and running the machine on open-source software rather than Microsoft Windows.

广达电脑总裁王震华(Michael Wang)表示："并非所有人都需要现在的高配置电脑。"

"Not all people need to have as heavily loaded PCs as they have today," says Michael Wang, Quanta's president.

英特尔创始人戈登o摩尔(Gordon Moore)发现，集成电路上的电子管数量，几乎每两年就增加一倍，推动科技行业生产更为强大的设备。

Intel's founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years, driving the technology industry to produce ever more powerful devices.

但是，全球IC设计与委外代工协会协会(Fabless Semiconductor Association)亚太执行理事王智立(Jeremy Wang)指出，计算机制造商现在必须使用最先进的科技，生产"相对老式"、功能更简单的电脑。

Now, though, computer makers will have to use the most advanced technology to produce "older", simpler specifications, argues Jeremy Wang, Asia-Pacific executive director of the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

广达电脑的王震华预测，将有许多不同的笔记本电脑出现在市场上，售价介于200美元至600美元之间。200美元是目前为止一台笔记本电脑的最低价格。他表示："将有许多不同的软硬件组合。"广达电脑已将其OLPC项目小组转变为一个新的业务部门。他表示："他们的任务就是创造一个市场。"

Mr Wang of Quanta predicts that many different laptops will appear on the market with price tags between $600 and $200 - the lowest price for a laptop so far. "There will be many different combinations [of software and hardware components] for different segments," he says. Quanta has transformed its OLPC project team into a new business unit. "Their task is to create a market," he says