OLPC Laptops to be Cow Powered

Everyone who is familiar with this blog knows I have a er… “beef” with the OLPC program. It is a monumental waste of 1 Billion dollars to give inoperable technology to poverty-stricken children. Children in poor countries need running water, ready and abundant power, and sturdy roads for transportation. Once basic infrastructure is in place then do-gooders can worry about educating the masses.

Now I hear that the crank mechanisms that are supposed to be used to power the crappy laptops may not be enough. So they are working on an alternative source of electricity. Cow Power. They are going to take an old generator out of a used car, run a bunch of belts and pulleys and use it to power the laptops in one Indian village. If this “Rube Goldburgery” isn’t proof of the foolishness of OLPC backers, nothing is. If a village has no power, why not donate money to purchase a diesel generator or run electricity to the village? Idiots.

From Infoworld here:

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows.

“We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle,” wrote OLPC’s Arjun Sarwal, in an e-mail dated Oct. 21 and posted to one of the group’s discussion lists.

Sarwal and others are now finalizing the design of the cow-powered generator.

The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages. Working in a village close to Mumbai, Sarwal said the group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not “consistently strong.” There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high.