Give One Get One Redux, OLPC XO-1 Now On Amazon 168
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?"
Errr No... (Score:1)
Of course it can't compete, the question is whether you want to make a charitable donation and get a lower quality machine, or make a decent contribution to a charity and get a decent machine.
OLPC is a reasonable charity, but personally I'll get a netbook and put the money towards research on malaria.
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...
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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.
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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
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Hmmm, I haven't incurred any support expenses on my kids OLPC. My 11-year-old bricked his but he used his sister's and an old camera memory card to fix it himself.
If he fixed it himself it wasn't bricked.
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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
Ummm. Yes. (Score:2)
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.
Mesh networking as standard (Score:2)
Killer app.
Slow, but better than standalone.
If it came in a reasonable colour I'd have one.
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.
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
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As the new owner of a blue, shiny Sony PRS-505 ereader with 4Gb of flash storage, I've been on the prowl for anything like this free in pdf or text form. I'm a member of two professional societies that advertise free access to books as part of their membership. I have Project Gutenberg's URL burned on my forehead. The Internet archive is on my speed dial, figuratively.
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Text books, not "tech books". I'm talking about real books where students can learn the fundamentals. The sites you show are mainly for much higher level courses. I had a much better time looking for books on homeschooling sites.
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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.
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Elementary school textbooks rarely become obsolete other than they don't cover the latest discoveries -- and the latest discoveries are rarely important to the basic material. Three, four, five, ten years is not too old for the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. I've got texts from the fifties that are easier to understand than modern ones, and just as relevant to the bas
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Wow, are you involved in any way with computers and networking? "simply write it and have it show up" is a grand goal, but it doesn't work that way here in the US with the schools wired with internet paid for by telephone taxes, why would it work in Nigeria or anyplace else the OLPC is being handed out?
As for the wireless network, th
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A better question is whether or not the money spent on the OLPC is the BEST use of the money.
For example, it is proven that better fed students do better. Is it better to spend money feeding the students (something the parents should be doing) or to spend money on books and teachers? If all you ask is "can it be useful (to
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.
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"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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Do you have a URL for this project?
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Not to put on slashdot. 8^)
We're starved enough for bandwidth here that I could push the whole country offline if the site got slashdotted. See my homepage and follow the OLPC tag if you want further details.
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You can't video conference with a pencil.
Let's just take a moment to appreciate that sentence. In how many circumstances would a sentence like this be useful? How frequently can you imagine someone needing this point cleared up? It seems a delightful absurdity, and the fact that it developed out of the natural course of this discussion is highly enjoyable.
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.
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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.
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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
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You don't even have a normal file system unless you go to the Terminal and bypass all the UI.
You're making the presumption that a hierarchal is the best way to organize data. Of course, you would think that, because you're used to using one, but that doesn't mean that there aren't better systems out there for people learning for the first time.
All that said, its still a great little machine, but $400 its quite a bit of money and you can get better hardware for that.
It would be foolish for someone to buy from the G1G1 program and expect the most productive machine out there. In the end, the person entering the program should be doing this either for charity or to satisfy their curiosity.
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You're making the presumption that a hierarchal is the best way to organize data.
My point is that if you want to exchange data with another computer you have quite a problem with the OLPC, because its whole interface is build pretty much ignoring what the rest of the world does, so you don't have much backward compatibility build in and you can also not just install a random Linux application and use it properly with the interface. The good old Terminal is still there and thus you can work around lots of issues, but interoperability with other non-OLPC machines is certainly not the OLPC
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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
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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.
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The AC adaptor they ship with the get-one XO can run on anything from 100 to 240 volts, 50 to 60 Hz.
As far as charging it goes, the damn thing is practically omnivorous.
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And without a regulated output, you are going to prevent a solar panel from dipping under 10V how, exactly?
That doesn't help much if you don't have electricity. Like, for instance, the children shown in the media material for
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So you plug in whatever 12V or higher solar charger you've got, and if it's sunny it charges, if cloud comes over it runs on the battery.
The AC charger came with the get-one XO. Their literature suggested that the give-one XO's had a foot crank and/or solar panel and a different battery.
On the battery life, its about three hours w
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Yes, OLPC XOs delivered to the field have nickel-based batteries instead of lithium-based ones. Lithium based batteries have a nasty habit of exploding if the charging isn't done properly, so this is probably a wise decision. But it means that the battery life you see isn't representative.
This article [laptopmag.com] might be an eye-opener, especially the bottom half which is an XO project manager in Mali. Power problems are one of the major obstacles with the device, and charging seems to work best in well situated US
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'?
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The last straw was when the new promised delivery date was just past the six month limit for disputing a charge -- if I "stayed with the program" and waited
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If OLPC couldn't ship 'em to donors, what makes anyone think they're shipping them to kids in the '2nd world'?
The deployment map [laptop.org] and deployments wiki page giving the status of the deployments is pretty convincing.
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.
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2: Do we pay for it?
Optimus Maximus
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
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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.
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Classic casual wear!
Mix and match with tighty whities and a Cheetos
encrusted Hawaiian shirt for a variety of stylish looks.
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"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."
Thanks for the memories! I sure do miss those cookies.
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Charity isn't a selling point. Cost, reliability, performance -- those are selling points.
I think that's an awfully narrow view.
Fundraising for PBS is heavily dependent on charity as a selling point. Matching donations by corporate donors are known to encourage people to "buy" the PBS product. Who'd a thunk it?
Then, you've got any number of corporations who promote their services or products explicitly using charity a selling point. That would probably include all the Fortune 500, along with the likes
Charitable appeal? (Score:2)
What charitable appeal? It's turned into a vehicle for spreading Microsoft's hegemony.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is heavier
Its the other way around, the Eee is 0.9kg, while the XO-1 is 1.5kg and that is actually quite heavy when you try to hold the thing in ebook mode for longer periods of time.
$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)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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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
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You could preload the OLPCs with eBooks, but they aren't doing that now so until then my question stands.
Also, the problem is that you want
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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
$200 laptop == how many textbooks? (Score:2)
I've heard this complaint before. Have you ever considered that the OLPC XO laptop at $200 can hold significantly more than $200 worth of books?
The XO has a built in webcam and microphone. I remember learning how cell phones in remote fishing villages in Peru allowed fisherman to check market prices before selling to the middle men. Imagine doing that while putting the Internet at their fingertips?
The XO is an enabling technology. It won't solve the problems of poor children around the world. But it will en
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A main goal of the OLPC was for digitized textbooks.
The now-bankrupt WorldSpace Satellite Radio was to deliver those textbooks via its satellite radio platform. There's even a driver for the OLPC to read this data from a WorldSpace receiver.
Search Slashdot for my old post concerning this matter and the relevant links.
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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
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I haven't been personally yet (and may not, we'll see how the DRC-Rwanda situation goes), but I've heard from other westerners that Rwanda has quite a bit more infrastructure than we do here near the Rwenzoris. Perhaps they have less expensive & faster internet that enables OLPC to work well there. As an internet platform here it would be unusable. A single webpage can take 30 minutes to load (although thankfully tonight its doing a bit better). You just can't get enough information
Donate One, Donate Two (Score:2)
I'm considering using the buy one, get one option and then donating the second laptop to a school in my area. I could donate two to third-world countries, but I believe in the "think globally, act locally" mantra. I want kids in my own neighborhood to have access to fun, interesting, educational technology too.
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I really don't want to be negative to rain on your parade, but... Buying one laptop for a school in your area could potentially be useless. The schools "IT Admin" will get it, poke around, and after a while will set it unused in the corner of the library or in their drawer. Instead, if you can get a group of people to buy one for each classroom, the admin could possibly find a use for a group of non-standard PCs. Just because we make a donation, it doesn't mean that they can use it.
I did some work at a n
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I'm a step ahead of you. I emailed their "technology" group this afternoon to see if they could make use of an XO. I'm actually hoping that they tell me that they can't use it. The school district in which I live is pretty well off already. If they can't use it, I'll call one of the less privileged school districts in the area.
You make a good point, though, about finding a way to put more than one laptop in their hands. Even if I can't get enough support together to provide one XO for every classroom,
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In Guatemala... (Score:2, Insightful)
I truly believe that here in Guatemala we could benefit from the OLPC. I want to get 2, because the true benefits come from having at least 2. Al the fun about sugar is the neighborhood.
Sure there is need for food, sure there is a need for infrastructure for many things. But being able to see the world, even from a small screen can definitely change your world view.
For me, nothing has shaped me, or my carreer that going abroad and studying in the US. Now I now that there is a better way for government t
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
No, it can not (Score:2)
The intersection of charitable people and people designing good computers is not empty, but there are many more people in the second group. Capitalism will do things better, than any group of starry-eyed do-gooders.
And if you say "market failure" — I'll pull out this very case of "$100 laptop" and beat you over the head with it. In the time it
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That's not really a fair comparison. In this case, the capitalist starts out with billions of dollars more than the do-gooder, not to mention already existing product development, shipping, customer service, and research department. Comparing the two is like putting 9-year-old Michael Jordan on the court against 30-year-old Michael Jordan, and saying that the outcome proves that players perform better when given proper financial incentives.
The product you deem superior is also less ambitious and ill-suite
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That's not at all, how start-ups start up (pun intended) — in the proverbial garages of their founders, lucky to get $20-80K of "seed financing". Michael Dell started his company with $1000 [wikipedia.org] in 1984. Hewlett and Packard founded theirs with $538 [wikipedia.org] (in 1939th money). On contrast, the OLPC [wikipedia.org] was sponsored by AMD, Brig
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How is that in any way a pun?
The point I was responding to was that mammoth companies like ASUS delivered "better" products in less time than the OLPC initiative, therefore for-profit trumps non-profit. I was arguing that profit vs. non-profit isn't nearly as relevant as the fact that ASUS has developed products before, ASUS has rolled out products before, and ASUS has shipped products before. In short, they've already made the sorts of mistakes that plagued the OLPC's launch, and learned from them.
If you
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What I was saying, funding is not the deciding factor in an efficient economy such as America's (until very recently anyway).
No, not really. There is a large fixed cost of making a computer portable and light. Adding a feature here and there on top of that fixed cost is marginally more expensive. Cheap laptops existed for a while, but they we
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Fixed costs? No such thing. We've had plastic since before personal computers, and for any given time since 1998, I can almost guarantee that you could come up with a spec sheet that could be mass-produced for $100-$200 per unit.
Here's my reasoning: my mom bought her first laptop around 1986. It was a 286, with perhaps a 320x200 resolution, and cost about $2000. Given eight iterations of Moore's law, that same laptop should have cost about $250 by 1998. I would expect the cost of the screen to plummet
$400? (Score:2)
Can buyer -pick- the developing country? (Score:2)
Maybe... just maybe... the OLPC project would get more L's donated if they allowed donors to choose the country to which the donated machine would go.
Is this provided, eg, by the Amazon interface?
If not, does the OLPC project provide it in other ways?
(Forget how it might look, to on-lookers... to maximize the number of kids who get computers, let donors have a bit more control as to destination.)
You had me at "Linux"... (Score:2)
...but you lost me at Windows.
Sorry guys... I sooooo wanted an OLPC and was gung-ho on the mission but with with Negroponte selling out the original concept and Krstic having left the project - it's soul is gone.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some GNU zealot (I'd like to shoot some GNUs some time...), but I think so much of the educational mission is lost once the child who owns the machine hits that brick wall that is the closed OS. The whole idea is that you're supposed to be able to explore EVERYTHING about
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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?
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Crazy thing is that is about what it cost me to get an XO into the UK last year. However to do so I had to sign up with a reshipping company, had to pay two lots of shipping (one to the reshipping company in the USA and then to the UK), import duty, and other associated fees.
It is the most rugged laptop I have used since a Toshiba T1900, however it has been crippled by having a stupid x86 processor in it. It should have been built with an ARM, for my speed and better battery life.
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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
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They did go to the "big manufacturer" for the display tech and OEM manufacturing. The problem is that none of the technical innovations of the OLPC remain exclusive to the OLPC. The problem is that sales and distribution outside of Uruguay, Colombia and Peru has been unimpressive - a less charitable word would be "negligible."
Summary of laptop orders [wikipedia.org]