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Give One Get One Redux, OLPC XO-1 Now On Amazon
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 17, 2008 01:14 PM
from the because-you-can dept.
from the because-you-can dept.
404 Clue Not Found writes "The One Laptop Per Child project's XO-1 laptop is once again available to the general public via its Give One Get One promotion, where $400 will buy two laptops, one for the purchaser and one for 'a child in the emerging world.' Having learned from their delivery and fulfillment headaches the first time around, this time they partnered with Amazon.com to handle shipping. But a year after its initial release, the market has become saturated with Eee-wannabe netbooks from every major manufacturer. Can the XO-1's charitable appeal, unique chassis and dual-mode screen compete with the superior performance and standard operating systems of its newer peers?"
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No. (Score:2)
Oh, GREAT timing there. (Score:4, Funny)
Last year I couldn't afford to do this despite the good economy.
This year I can't afford to do this due to the lousy economy.
Maybe next year.
It doesn't matter if it can't compete with an Eee. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to donate a PC you can always just buy a single PC for $199 and not bother with getting one for yourself.
They never wanted to make a machine that can compete with the other laptops. They wanted to make one that'd be good for kids in a 3rd world countries. Not one that'd be great in your living room. The only reason to get one has always been the uniqueness of it, not it's specs.
Re:It doesn't matter if it can't compete with an E (Score:5, Interesting)
Its specs make it attractive not for the living room, but for the camp site. I took mine to Starwood [rosencomet.com] and Free Spirit Gathering [freespiritgathering.org] and Playa Del Fuego [playadelfuego.org], and it was great - easy to recharge off of a 12 volt battery, capable of picking up wifi from one campground's office, resistant to the elements. Hooked it up to my cell phone as a modem, and I could handle any work emergencies that popped up.
For some of us who want a simple, rugged, portable box, it fits the bill nicely. Load XFCE on it rather than (shudder) Sugar, though.
Parent
Give one? (Score:2)
How many pads of paper, pencils and books does $199 get? Maybe be of more use than a computer?
Re:Give one? (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper and pencils are one thing. Books are an entirely different beast.
Sure, you could get a lot of physical supplies for the cost of an XO and in that light it isn't a good deal.
The number of e-books and online information the xo can access versus dead tree books is the kicker. Size and weight matter for shipping, transport and delivery. A collection of bits is a lot easier to move around and copy than ink on paper.
Parent
Some books should be free (Score:2)
Plenty of books on entry level courses of Algebra, English, Physics, etc. that should be free because their copyright should have expired. How much has changed with basic algebra over the past 50 years that we need to pay a publisher $50+ every year for an updated text?
I think your argument is more for instead of giving a laptop to every child, to just give a high quality, internet enabled laser printer to every teacher. I think we could pay for the toner for all the books they will print cheaper than we ca
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And how many pads of paper, pencils and books does it take to download up to date information from the internet?
This way the children in question aren't stuck with crappy out-of-date textbooks three, four, however many years down the line.
Re:Give one? (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper and pencils - a whole lot of both.
Books - now there's the clincher. With a internet-enabled XO (or any other computer), you can theoretically access any and all knowledge that's out there, including a whole lot of books (textbooks or other kinds). Now, if you had $199 to spend, could you buy enough books to give you the same variety of knowledge? Could you carry it with you as easily?
Ok, maybe you and your neighbor in the next hut get together - you buy some books, and he buys some others, and now you have access to both collections. But what if, one day you are interested in 19th century literature, and the next day introductory computer programming? Shall we ask a third neighbor to step in? What if you want to know what the latest commodity prices are, to figure out whether to sell your crop now or hold it for another week - what printed book would tell you that? Do you have access to today's newspaper in your village? Now, $199 dollars doesn't seem to go as far.
Scale it up to an entire country, where millions of dollars are available, and you can have a pretty good library that captures a good portion of human knowledge in books. But, now you have the problem of distribution - everyone from around the country has to come and get the books. There's also the problem that you only have or two copies of everything, so only one or two people at a time can access it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"you can theoretically access any and all knowledge that's out there, including a whole lot of books (textbooks or other kinds)."
If you have internet access. and if those books are not protected and kept away from evil you for not buying them.
Finally, IF those books are in the language you can read.
using the magical, Billions and billions of books, are in fact not a reality for a third world kid sitting on a dirt floor 1200 miles away from the nearest starbucks and free wifi.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
mailing a 10 gig usb stick with 6000 pdfs on is though.
Re:Give one? (Score:4, Funny)
For that matter, how many third-world children can you get for $199? These bobbins aren't going to thread themselves.
Parent
Re:Give one? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is access
How many of us would have jobs if we were not computer literate, and how many of us started our computer literacy before we reached out teens years? Be it a teletype, a dumb terminal, or a microcomputer, how many of us were able to do significant things with computer because we had years to play with them? How would our lives be different if people had thought 'they are just playing with computers' and 'it isn't worth paying for such technology.' For myself, I grew up with seven segments displays, so I know how they work.
Like a tuppence for paper and string, a small amount for a computer and an occasional internet access can open up a world. Sure some will sell the machine. Most will just play games. But many will use it to learn. Download GIMP and draw. Download Maxima and calculate. Download qucs and build circuits. Download eclipse and program. Download novels and read. Download LaTex and write. Sure most of this can be done with paper and pencil, but where are the transferrable skills?
I am clearly talking about the above average student, but, talking to people from developing countries, these are the students that attend and succeed in many of the village schools. I can't imagine these students not using the tools to help them succeed. From the stories I hear they do not destroy books as first world students do. They do not throw away food knowing the government will supply them with more. And overall, they are not forced to waste their time at school sleeping when a field needs plowing.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Give one? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many pads of paper, pencils and books does $199 get? Maybe be of more use than a computer?
False equivalency. You can't video conference with a pencil. Or make (decent) music with a piece of paper. The OLPC's capacity for re-use is also somewhat superior.
I live and work in the South Pacific. Let me assure you that, while paper and pencils are in short supply, it's mostly because paper doesn't last very long in any useful state in a tropical climate.
The OLPC, on the other hand, is standing up quite well to the elements in the pilot project we're running here.
Parent
If they just sold the thing for $200... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they just sold the thing for $200, they might get enough volume to get down to the $100 laptop.
The real problem with the OLPC, though, is that it's now a 3 year old design. The OLPC is being overtaken by commercial products.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? There's something out there with the same LCD technology and an OS written specifically for the hardware by Red Hat in order to maximize battery life? What's it called?
Re:If they just sold the thing for $200... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the battery life isn't very good, and the screen sucks to look at for any length of time.
I have one. Haven't touched it in nine months. Its an interesting (if overpriced) toy.
The GP is absolutely right -- the gimmicks with it aren't really all that compelling to 99% of the people who would possibly spend $200 (or $400) for one, and in every other way there are far better products on the market now.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The LCD in a normal room-lit situation with backlight on isn't really all that pretty, the resolution is ok, but its heavily depended on the viewing angle, which can annoy quite a bit, due to the pixel layout it also has a diagonal grid all over it, which can irritate. In sunlight its a different thing of course, resolution is great and its very readable, not quite ePaper-like, but close enough, the viewing angle problem and the diagonal grid disappear when not backlit.
The OS on the other side isn't really
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's something out there with the same LCD technology
Not that I'm aware of, although former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen has been planning to commercialize the LCD technology she developed.
And it's worth pointing out that it's not so much that the display has amazing quality, but rather that the display has amazing quality given the low manufacturing cost -- in backlit mode, i.e. all the time except in direct sunlight, the XO-1's 1200x900 (sub)pixel display is noticeably more artifacty than a similarly-sized
Re: (Score:2)
Your XBOX 360 is 3 years old too. Does that mean its no good anymore? The real uniqueness in the OLPC is its extremely tight integration with hardware. A screen that can be read in full sun as black and white, and a system that recharges with the sun, or a small handcrank? The ad-hoc networking alone is quite ahead of its time.
the problem was fraud, not shipping (Score:5, Interesting)
Having learned from their delivery and fulfillment headaches the first time around, this time they partnered with Amazon.com to handle shipping.
You mean the cases like one of my clients, who ordered two, and received none?
When he called and asked WTF was going on, they couldn't "find" his order, and refused to refund his credit card, despite proof they'd charged him. He ended up having to do a chargeback.
If OLPC couldn't ship 'em to donors, what makes anyone think they're shipping them to kids in the '2nd world'?
Plenty of Room (Score:2, Insightful)
Keyboard (Score:5, Informative)
Other than that it's a perfectly comparable to other sub-notebooks. Obviously twice the price of what it should be, but it's extremely light and rugged. It's the ideal machine for anyone wanting to run linux, since the entire machine is completely open, including the BIOS. The dual-mode screen could really be useful for if you want to work outside one day, which is pretty much impossible with my T60.
Culture shock. (Score:2, Insightful)
People are charitable in small ways; A few dollars to a beggar. Copies of Windows XP for libraries. Buying a friend who's broke lunch. That kind of thing. But would you, say, pay 20% more at Best Buy to send a second iPod to a poor starving child in Africa? No. You'd go across the street to Super Electrono Mart and buy it there without the "charity tariff", and maybe use the extra money to buy that broke friend of yours some Burger King. You know, if you were feeling charitable. -_-
Charity
Re: (Score:2)
I know. I remember back in the day when these cute girls would come to my door and try to sell overpriced cookies.
Re:Culture shock. (Score:5, Funny)
> I remember back in the day when these cute girls would come to my door and try to sell overpriced cookies.
I remember back in the day selling cookies to fat, middle-aged men who'd answer wearing nothing but boxers and a stained sports t-shirt while my mother waited impatiently in the car. If you ask me, they didn't charge enough.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Classic casual wear!
Mix and match with tighty whities and a Cheetos
encrusted Hawaiian shirt for a variety of stylish looks.
Charitable appeal? (Score:2)
What charitable appeal? It's turned into a vehicle for spreading Microsoft's hegemony.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely worth pointing out. I'd like precisely 0 dollars of any charity I partake in to go either straight to MS's coffers, or towards propagating worldwide dependence on their single OS.
OLPC, and the other netbook companies, climbing down and making most stuff XP is slightly sickening.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has some of hot air and one pilot project in Peru vs. plenty of XO deployments with Sugar (including the same Peru where main government-backed deployment uses Sugar).
Don't count on it (Score:2)
You cannot guarantee that Microsoft will not come along in the future and grant some sort of "sweetheart" deal and "upgrade" these machines to Windows.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No chance at competeing. (Score:4, Interesting)
On one hand it's good that each sale for the OLPC project sells two laptops, but at the same time they're not in any way shape or form selling to the lower-class and even a lot of the middle class demographics that may need it in more developed countries it's being marketed to. Of course you're going to get sales from wealthy individuals, but think about everyone living paycheck to paycheck that probably doesn't have $200 to just blow on some random "toy" for their kid. Even in the middle-class where they may have the money to spend, but not a huge amount extra... are they really going to spend $400 bucks on an OLPC, or are they going to look at an Eee PC at almost half the cost for some models, or the MSI Wind at just a smidgen more?
Plus there is now a plethora of ultra low-power, low-cost, ultra mobile computers on the market. Again, I love the nobility of the project, but I think it's time to open it up to $200 per computer with optional monetary donation towards another computer. I bet with the extra sales made it will get about the same number of donated PC's abroad while keeping the production numbers up and the project alive. After all, there's no help at all without this project so why not do the best to keep it afloat.
Too little, too late. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have the OLPC to thank for this year's Netbook explosion, as manufacturers discovered that there was a real market for modestly spec'd machines in a tiny form factor. Unfortunately, the OLPC looks lame in comparison. It's a great example of how academic projects have difficulty competing in a commercial environment. And, no matter what idealists might proclaim, any time you get into large-scale manufacturing you are forced to operate in a commercial environment. Producing millions of machines "for academic use" requires the same skills as running a for-profit company. You need a sales staff to convince countries to buy the machines by the millions. You need financing for R&D and production. You need hardware and software engineers, and you need a clear roadmap.
Doing this stuff is tougher in academia, and OLPC was hamstrung by a heavy dose of ideology (we've gotta design really clever custom software, make it cute and bleeding-edge, etc.) that commercial manufacturers could side-step. As a result, the OLPC crew futzed around with a very ambitious software framework. They futzed about endlessly tweaking the hardware design. In comparison, Asus actually built a cheap little machine and threw it into the marketplace as a crude first try. It ignited the imagination of manufacturers and consumers alike. Asus is now on their third generation (I think... I've lost track) of netbooks in a little over a year, and others jumped into the fray as soon as they could get their hands on Intel's Atom processor. There is no way that OLPC could keep up with such an aggressive hardware program. The result is that their once revolutionary device now seems quaint.
$89 laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
Spotted on Engadget a few months ago:
$89 laptop [engadget.com]
It is extremely basic, but it is at least interesting to see what is possible at the low-end of the laptop market these days. Looks like it would be fine for very basic wifi browsing (wikipedia etc) email and document creation at least.
I don't really see the... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think this is a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't think this is a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, those textbooks are already digitized, believe me. They are typically in Word at least (due to requests by professors and teachers), and then in addition are in something like Quark, Pagemaker, or the
The problem is that the publishers aren't going to want them digiti
Of course, one could always digitize stuff over a hundred years old, for things like language arts and elementary school math.
But it is far more efficient to learn from a book, with a pencil and a piece of paper. As far as I can tell, comp
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I appreciate hearing your voice of experience - when theory and data disagree, go with the data.
I'm curious to know your other opinions on this - putting economics aside - I'm wondering if textbooks are less intimidating than a computer in that regime? Our kids have had so much tech for so long, I wonder if this isn't overlooked - and I don't know what it's like to be around non-tech driven kids. I done a LOT of foreign travel, but never to such a technological extreme environment as the one you're descri
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The modem I'm using right now (which has an upload speed of maybe 200 bps and a download speed right now--and this is the non-peak middle of the night speed-- of 7 kbps) costs 90,000/= per a month which is a typical 3 month salary here (I made dinner for five people tonight for less than 1,000/=). Schools have no money to buy internet access (I've been to only one school so far that had it and it was WOEFULLY slower than my current connection). One possible
Wouldn't do it again... (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the 'bait-n-switch' move to Windows, the OLPC program has left a bad taste in my mouth. My OLPC sits unused in a pile of electronics gear that 'one of these days' I'll get around to offing on ebay or craigslist.
I liked the idea of it, I liked the technology of it, I really hate the idea of using it to introduce so much of the developing world to Windows. Can you imagine the issues we'll have with the net once the spam/bots manage to hide in the always-on routing chip of an OLPC?
Hasn't it been hijacked by MS ? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of openness will be undone in the next version and they simply will get a cut down XP so that the best they can do is look for hided excel Easter eggs
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get it. A laptop that costs $99 each is selling for £275 for two (or £135.50 each) at Amazon, so you would think the extra cost was for shipping, nope, that will be another £50. £325 in total then.
The BBCs reporting on this has not been impressive, failing to mention the shipping cost at all and glossing over the expense of this 100 dollar laptop.
Here's the story [bbc.co.uk]
So 325, eh? That's a grand total of nearly 500 dollars for the 100 dollar laptop. Oh, yeah, sorry - two of them. Where do I sign up?
You can do this with an EeePC too (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy yourself an EeePC through regular channels and send a donation cheque/check to OLPC.
Or just send them a cheque...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe if you donate a laptop, the kids getting the XOs will figure out how to cluster them and model more than just a malaria cure.
Re: (Score:2)
And perhaps the person who would have discovered how to stop malaria for good dies of malaria, due to lack of medicines now.
Speculation like this doesn't do much good. I can only make a decision for myself, but I prefer to make a donation to a cause where there is a measurable benefit, and not a for profit [texyt.com] scheme that hasn't been able to show any benefits for the recipients so
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you rearrange the molecules in a brick you can theoretically produce a computer. Therefore, not even a brick is totally bricked. Furthermore, all computation requires time. Everything frozen in time is bricked, so even supercomputers doing intense computations are bricked when you just consider a moment in time.
Let's say an object A is bricked in a certain time interval T if there is no way to perform a computation using A in time T. Then a 3 GHz computer processor is bricked for T less than 300 ps. Ever
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While the Eee-PC finally makes sense, with wifi being so widely available and the technology being so dirt cheap, they are far from original. But you're going to have a hard time convincing user