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Wireless Utopia

The journey towards a free wireless world.

Prepaid Computer

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Following the enormous success of prepaid mobile especially in the emerging markets, we now have the prepaid computer from Microsoft. And MS has teamed up with AMD this time to target the BOP market. Except for the catchy name of FlexGo, not much details have been provided. Presumeably instead of paying for airtime (as in mobiles) the consumers would pay for using MS's software (Windows and MS Office) and AMD's hardware. No information whether the hardware will be tuned to the geographies that BOP markets envelope.

But its very easy to rip apart this scheme. What stops people from just bypassing MS and installing Linux on it. Open Office today has excellent support of all kinds of MS docs. Its secure and free. As Mike points out, this seems to be another stupid startup idea. Not to mention the fact that mobile communications are a much more powerful commincations device compared to the PC in such markets. As a learning tool they might be better, but people there need connectivity soultions. And internet is non existent in these parts of the world!

If this is MS's answer to OLPC, its incredibly stupid.

Update: Engadget has its converage here.

Tags: MS FlexGo AMD Prepaid Mobile Linux OLPC
posted by Rajiv, 2:11 AM

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