OLPC Manufacturer to Sell $200 Laptop On Open Market

srinravi writes "ArsTechnica reports that Quanta, the company manufacturing the XO laptops, has plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. 'According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC's XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.' While OLPC plans to sell the laptops in bulk to governments, which will then distribute the hardware to school children, the XO computer itself is not for sale on the open market. These XO-like commercial devices are still something of an unknown, but it has been announced they'll be using Open Source software."

Should sell well

[Maximum Prophet]

People still use and support the Tandy Model 100 http://www.club100.org/ [club100.org]. AFAIR, it cost more than $200 when it was new, adjusting for inflation.

Re:Should sell well

[Lumpy]

In fact Tandy 100 and 102's still go for a premium. I recently sold both my 102's for well over $100.00 each. way more than I expected.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal of the OLPC project is education. These computers will make the world of information available to those who would otherwise have been limited to their indigent backgrounds. Cleaning their water for them is great, cleaning their water for them and teaching them how to clean their own water is even better. You're not going to make any real progress in the third world until it has been saturated by education.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[CastrTroy]

They do have VMWare images you can run, although this isn't the same, as you wouldn't know how it runs on the actual hardware, I'm sure that it would help out quite a bit with developing applications.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your valuable FUD. Here's further reading [laptop.org].

Re:Here's an idea

[Peter Trepan]

The XO is going to help a kid who would have to travel 10mi to the nearest well-stocked library.

In the rural U.S. community where I grew up, it was in fact 10 miles to the nearest well-stocked library.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[krasni_bor]

1) OLPC seems to have all the funds they need right now.
2) If the project works at all they will have huge economies of scale just selling to governments.
3) It is not difficult to get a development machine, if you get involved and write a little code FIRST (using an emulator, etc.).
4) Clearly, Quanta thinks they will be able to make them at scale and make even more than OLPC demands, based on this announcement.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[An Onerous Coward]

Why are you calling it "the $200 laptop?" The OLPC project has always had a target of $100/laptop. If you're using the phrase to refer to the OLPC's laptops, you're wrong. If you're using it simply to refer to $200 laptops in general, then you're being tautological. A $200 laptop is a $200 laptop because it's a laptop that is selling for $200.

Read the article. Or the summary at the very least. The manufacturer tasked with building the laptops for the OLPC project has simply decided that it can use its experience to offer a very similar piece of hardware to the public at a low price. It's not the OLPC laptop, and it's not the much hoped for "buy one for $200 and a kid in Rwanda gets one free" deal that's been suggested. There's no reason to think that these laptops will be sold in bulk to governments.

OLPC not for sale, not a company

[capseed]

Note that Quanta's mobile laptop, even if the underlying hardware and most of the software are the same, is NOT the OLPC machine. AFAIK OLPC has always wanted their project to exist outside of commercial markets. One of the main reasons for this was to help prevent a black market trade in these machines. If you have an XO, and you are not a child registered to use it, it will be very obvious that it is stolen.

As far as the governments taking the laptops and doing something evil or keeping them from their intended users, does anybody know how far OLPC is going to step in with the education and support issues? Negroponte has said many many many times that OLPC is not a hardware project, it is an education project based on decades of research with children and computers. It would seem odd if they didn't send their own people out in the field to provide support and guidance to the teachers and students who get to experience the XO. I would love to be one of them!

Summary:
Quanta != OLPC
OLPC != hardware project

Re:Special Charity Editions

[magarity]

Can I pay $50 more and have a special "OLPC Sponsor" logo etched into the case
 
Alas, I think you'll find that custom etching will run you more than $50. Still, this idea has some merit. They've said though, and it makes sense, that the reason they won't sell the OLPC machine is because as soon as there is a legit market for the things there will be nefarious individuals who will procede to steal the donated ones and recycle them back into the sale channel.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Oktober Sunset]

No, they're goatherds, shepherds herd sheep.

Intel Classmate PC, Personal Internet Computer

[davidwr]

Two other machines vying for the low-end space include:

Intel Classmate PC [linuxdevices.com]

Data Evolution Holdings' Personal Internet Communicator [linuxdevices.com]

Re:Distribution Control

[Acer500]

Am I the only who keeps tabs on this project who worries that the OLPC OX laptops are going to end up in the hands of people who want them as toys or cheap low-cost laptops? Call me cynical but selling these things to governments in Third World countries and expecting the distribution to be done in an honest and ethical way so that every single one ends up in the hands of a deserving child seems hopelessly naive to me.

I live in Uruguay, one of the early adopters of the OLPC program. I know it's tough to believe, but although our governments are corrupt and inefficient, we do have a somewhat working democracy, and this is one of the "hot" issues where the opposition (and people like myself) will be keeping close tabs on the government, which will probably ensure honest distribution.

Believe me, the opposition would like nothing better than a scandal involving this (it would slur the current governing party, which is a frontrunner for the next elections, plus it involves stealing from children so it would be doubly harmful), while the current government would tout it as a huge archievement and will use it as PR whenever it can ("we delivered a computer to every child in the country!!!").

What safeguards are in place to prevent some corrupt government bureaucrat from doling them out to political cronies, black marketeers or any other undeserving party (for financial gain or not) and then just claiming that they have turned up missing or that they never got them and that they need more?

Besides the political issue, there's also a mostly free press in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil. Here we have an investigative TV show which likes to air cases like government officials using public cars, offices, etc. for private use, bribery, etc. and there are similar ones in Argentina and probably Brazil. It would be a huge coup (and ratings boost) to uncover such a case.

I have more faith in our public institutions and our press than I currently have for US press and institutions (see: US elections).