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."

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think what will happen when these dirt cheap laptops hit the market and the average non-business user finds out that it does everything he needs....for so much less. What will that do to the overpriced, virus infected win-laptop market?

Cost of distribution and sales

[PIPBoy3000]

I think part of the reason the $200 laptop costs $200 is that they're selling them in bulk to governments. It's then up to the government to distribute it appropriately. If you're doing it yourself, you've got to pay for the distribution infrastructure yourself, which gets tacked on to the cost of the $200 laptop. Now, these days with Amazon and Dell, you can do pretty good at minimizing these costs, but it'll still make it more expensive.

If that ends up bringing the cost of the laptop into the $300-$400 range, you're suddenly competing with the likes of Dell and other low-cost laptop manufacturers.

Sans kill switch?

[OglinTatas]

I would certainly be interested, if I knew that it did not include a kill switch which would allow my government or anyone to destroy it on a whim. linky [slashdot.org]

I hope they do it

[arivanov]

I know at least several cases where people working on medical diagnostics projects have tried to get their hand on the OLPC kit for the purposes of field medical lab automation and have been told to sod off.

There is a long list of diagnostic technologies which require a computer for analysing data in the field. At the moment this means using either a specialised system or a commercial ruggedized portable. In either case the overall bill for a small field lab goes into the many 1000$ range which makes this technology prohibitive for mass deployment. OLPC class hardware would have been the perfect replacement bringing the cost down into a range which will make it affordable.

So if the OLPC gets sidelined and the same kit is available commercially, personally I would give one big cheer. This will mean that people like Medicines sans Frontiers will finally be able to have proper diagnostic (and medical records) kit anywhere they go, no matter how in the middle of nowhere it is.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Otter]

Nothing about this project makes any sense. They won't sell the hardware at a profit to raise funding or create economy of scale. They don't attempt to get the platform into the hands of developers who might be able to develop applications, instead of relying on giving compilers to children who have never seen a computer before. My suspicion is that they simply can't make them at the price/number points they keep claiming, but who knows?

By the way, if any of the MIT people involved with this project have an explanation, drop a message in one of my JE's and I'll be delighted to walk over and be set straight.

Distribution Control

[petermmcc]

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. 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?

It makes sense to me to sell them outright to the general public but make them pay a fair market price to fund the distribution system so that real controls are in place to make sure that these things aren't sold in flea markets or used for nefarious purposes. I mean the intentions of OLPC are very honorable from an idealistic viewpoint- I'm just very worried that these things in the real world are just going to be too valuable to get passed down to the distribution chain to their intended recipients. We're sending what are essentially consumer electronic toys in to the heart of the poorest places on the planet and expecting that the people in control of these regions won't try to scheme and maneuver this project for personal financial or political gain. To prevent that real controls need to be in place and those controls can only be provided with a distribution system that is well funded. The funding should come from the people who want to buy these things as personal toys with the added benefit that there then will be less incentive for these things to end up on the black market.

PCs like cell phones?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The price of a basic PC, with just enough power to do browsing, email, a little bit of photoshop and screen shows and minor word processing has come under 200$ at bulk price. It is not inconceivable that some DSL/broadband company would not give it away for a two year broadband contract. Google has bought so much of capactity in the dark fibers, that it can become a viable broadband provider and give away PCs for free. And Google is also gaining valuable experience running metro area size WiFi network in Cupertino. Further Google has to negate the fundamental advantage MSFT has, that is ever changing standards, comaptibility issues.

Roll it all into one, you should expect GooglePC/BroadBand (beta ofcourse) sometime soon. If the hardward price drops far enough it can even sustain itself giving away the hardware and live on advertisements alone!

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[morgan_greywolf]

The difference here is that the poor people in the U.S. (defined as any household below the official poverty line (~$25K/year)) are rich and highly-educated compared to the poor goat farmers in Kenya.

Re:Should sell well

[OECD]

Does anyone nowadays make a small computer with a decent sized keyboard and without a big flippy screen?

Take a look at AlphaSmart's portable computers [alphasmart.com]. The Neo goes for $250 and is roughly equivalent to a Model 100.

Simputer

[vivek7006]

Remember Simputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer/ [wikipedia.org] ?

By the time it was released, it was overpriced and underwhelming. I wont be surprised is this device meets the same fate.

Subsidize sales to poor countries

[HangingChad]

I'd pay $250.00 for one and they could take that extra $50.00 and use it to subsidize the cost of sending them to really poor countries and villages.

Why are they so fricking insistent on not selling them retail? I'd pay a lot to be able to whip out a bright green laptop and hand-crank it in the middle of a meeting. Don't mind me, please have your sales droid prattle on incessantly as if I weren't even here.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyway, first marketing costs? There are people practically begging to get these devices...and even willing to pay more than the "targeted" cost of ~$100."

Let's be honest here. It's probably only a few thousand geeks who are doing the begging, and not all of those translate to sales. For instance, I really wanted a Wii before they came out but now the system has been reviewed and the shortcomings made clear I've put it on the back burner and found better uses for my cash. So, without marketing they'll get a couple of thousand sales. This isn't worth the effort for a project that's intended to work in blocks of millions of units.

As I'm commenting I might as well add this. $200 laptops are not special. It's what I paid for mine second hand, and mine came with Windows (so I can dual boot for playing games/using obscure Windows only software and hardware) and I believe mine has a better screen and 3D card too. Competing against a glut of second hand laptops available on the cheap and perfectly suitable for personal use would be a stupid business strategy.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[suggsjc]

Ok, I'll bite on at least the off-topic wii rant. I am a proud wii owner, and I play with my wii daily (haha, like you haven't heard THAT one before). But seriously, you mean to tell me that you can in the same post admit to buying a sub $200 laptop and also think the wii has shortcomings. Because the only shortcoming that I have found (and it really isn't even a big one) is the graphics. So that nullifies your opinion on graphics since the wii will probably perform better than your cheapo laptop.

Your may have a point about the few thousand geeks thing. But at the same time, it might be easier to get a few average joe's to drop $200 to "just do email and surf" instead of the $400+ for a new dell. Also, I was advocating that someone else purchase the million units and resell, so it would still be operating in the "blocks of millions of units" category.