$100 Laptop Repriced at $175

prostoalex writes "The $100 laptop introduced by Nicholas Negroponte as part of the One Laptop Per Child program will end up costing $175, Associated Press says. The demand for the program is apparent as 'seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white "XO" computers — Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya — but it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash.'"

Not enough

[Ep0xi]

I am on argentina and the Laptop is going to cost 175 dollars which here means 550 pesos which with the costs of translation (oil) and the taxes it will be at 900 pesos which is something like 300 dollars and 900 pesos is the cost of a Pentium 3 600Mhz with 128 mb ram and 20Gb hard drive. What is the relation Cost-Power of this Laptops? Either way if it is intended to be for poor people thats not the way to do it, and the worst i can tell is that poor people does not have credit cards like in other countries. I am not telling just that my country is like India, but just that this is the first country to invest in technology, so you might to justify what is the thing we might buy. Buy it by CASH? think twice, just in case you not want to hear how difficult is for me to sell a damn 100 hundred dollars CPU.

Re:Governments?

[Original Replica]

why do they need these governments to sign on? Can't they just, you know, sell them to people? Why force them (via their governments) to buy one?

I was under the impression that either the governments in question would be buying them or they would be paid for by charities. The families getting these laptops sure as hell don't have the funds to pay for them, so to the end user they will be free. That means you need some way (on site administration) for the "right" people to get the laptops, and you need a request for the charities to respond to. These two requirements are the job of the governments of the people in need.

Re:Not enough

[JeffAMcGee]

"and the taxes" ... They are selling these in bulk to national governments. I doubt that any government is worried about paying sales taxes to itself.

Re:Needs a new name

[Anonymous Coward]

you meant one laptop every 1.75 child or 0.57 laptop per child

Re:No story here.

[Dara Hazeghi]

Either you're a crazed hippie completely out of touch with reality, or you're a troll:

Euro value 4/26/05 = $1.29
Euro value 4/26/07 = $1.36

Not exactly spiraling out of control. Total loss of value in two years = 5.2%, not half.

Re:Why not....?

[burns210]

which are devices that hardly fit the description of "rugged"..
Have you actually used one? Like, at all? The machines are quite "rugged". Or were you just making a baseless claim?
As for why not desktop machines? Power requirements and portability are two of the reasons.

From TFA

[MonkeyINAbaG]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175

AND

Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.

The project is still on track to its price target of $100, it is still in BETA FFS!

Quit with the FUD already! Theres nothing like working on something high profile to make you grow a bit of a distaste for /. hype!

Re:I'm just waiting...

[Cutie Pi]

As of today, one Euro = $1.36

It takes 36% more dollars to equal one Euro. The Franc doesn't exist any more. Your math abilities and world knowledge should seriously concern people.

Re:No story here.

[Coryoth]

Picking a couple of points isn't the most robust measure, especially with things as potentially volaile as currency. If you look at the five year trend [yahoo.com], it doesn't look so good. The US dollar rallied a little in late 05, early 06, but generally it's steadily sinking down. The Grandparent post is radically overstating things, but the picture isn't as rosy as you want to make out either.

Re:Expressed interest

[grcumb]

And in addition, if this were a Microsoft product, everyone would be yelling "vaporware!" and bitching about the price increase.

OLPC would qualify as vapourware if:

• The first production run weren't already going ahead.
• There weren't already programmes in place to deploy this laptop, and lots more in the works.
• The company producing them hadn't already stated their desire to market them into the consumer supply chain as well.

For those of you keeping score, India's attempt at this died on the vine, Microsoft's $600-cell-phone-attached-to-keyboard-and-TV alternative does meet the criteria for vapourware. Intel's ClassmatePC is barely out of the gate. And AMD's offering seems to have been shelved (wisely, perhaps) in favour of OLPC.

Near as I can tell, OLPC is the one project that least resembles vapourware of all the announced projects out there.

Bigger story: It now can run Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Not mentioned anywhere in the summary, or in the modded up comments, is the bigger story for /.:

"However, Negroponte disclosed that XO's developers have been working with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) so a version of Windows can run on the machines as well. It could be the $3 software package that Microsoft announced last week for governments that subsidize student computers. It includes Windows XP Starter Edition and some of Microsoft's "productivity" software.

Word of Microsoft's involvement was somewhat striking given that the software company and its closest corporate partner, Intel Corp. (INTC), have questioned whether the One Laptop Per Child's computers will do much to stimulate educational gains. Bill Gates once denigrated the machine as not being a "decent computer." And Intel is pushing its own inexpensive computer for developing countries, the $400 Classmate PC.

The ever-optimistic Negroponte turned those criticisms around on Thursday, arguing that Microsoft wouldn't have bothered with its $3 international software package and Intel wouldn't be pushing Classmate unless they had something to fear from One Laptop Per Child's innovations."

Cheops' Law

[Chas]

Everything takes longer and costs more.

Re:Getting that first 3 million orders.

[kegon]

> If the power goes out, you can crank-start it

No you can't [laptop.org], "The yellow crank, while cute, in the end proved impractical; it migrated to the AC adapter as it also morphed into one or more other types of human-power devices."

No crank.

Re:me thinks kids in inner city schoos ...

[photomonkey]

I did benefit from my education. I went to a shithole schools all the way up to my university years. There I learned that the system wouldn't teach me anything other than the fact that my education and my future were entirely up to me because most of the teachers, other kids and parents simply didn't give a shit.

I spent much of my formative years outside of the classroom in the local library. Sure I played sports and videogames. I was a pretty well-rounded kid. No thanks to the schools I went to.

Re:Kind of cool but is this really worth it?

[Ian Bicking]

Here's the features I can think of that the XO has that the listed laptop does not:

• Screen is readable in full sunlight
• Power consumption is targeted at 2 Watts
• Laptop can sleep while the screen stays on (e.g., when reading a book)
• No moving parts
• A minimal number of wires and connections (for instance, the motherboard is right next to the screen)
• Water-resistant design -- you can pour a cup of water right over the keyboard without damage
• 802.11s wireless, allowing connections with peers and connections to the internet via peers
• The wireless routing stays on even when the rest of the laptop is off
• Built-in camera/video
• NiMH (or LiFeP) battery, to avoid the safety issues of Li-ion batteries; generally toxic components are being avoided
• Targeting 2000 cycles of the battery (typical batteries are 500-1000)
• You can use a stylus on the touchpad
• Monitor revolves into tablet configuration

If you want a scaled-down version of a normal laptop, the Classmate PC is basically designed like that. You can see a direct comparison in this table [laptopmag.com]. Frankly it looks clunky and lacking in creativity when compared to the XO.

Generally the XO is designed for durability and low power consumption, not speed. It also takes into account its very specific target audience in many small ways. It's not a general-purpose machine, it doesn't have any commercial aspirations, it's purely a laptop for children, particularly those in developing nations.

Unlike WebTV this has a very good screen -- it's small, but it's completely usable. It runs normal Linux applications (they don't fit into the environment that well unless you make some modifications, but they do run). The processor is x86. It has a reasonable amount of memory and disk -- small by today's standards, but still reasonable even by today's standards. 256Mb of memory is really quite good. Also, unlike those products, this is not a niche product. This is intended to be deployed in considerable scale, and so it's a viable target platform all on its own.

Re:Why not....?

[youthoftoday]

I was doing tech support to a school network in Uganda a couple of years ago. They had a room full of machines. This was a concrete building with a good roof, but even so the 'mud hut' effect still happened. The amount of dirt that got inside EVERYTHING was frankly astounding. I'll never forget the day I spent removing bat droppings from all the mice.
So in hot, dusty under-developed countries, it is a problem. And the OLPC's membrane keyboard and sealed widgets are certainly welcome.

Except

[Colin Smith]

American products and Americans are still overpriced relative to their European counterparts even with that drop in the dollar. Just goes to show how distorted an economy can become when it's based on the currency being the oil reserve currency.

Course. There's also the quality problem as well.

 

Re:I'm just waiting...

[anticypher]

Many commodities (oil for example) are traded in USD

This is one reason why gasoline/petrol prices in Europe have remained relatively stable, even as the political situation in oil producing regions has caused crude prices to increase. Most oil producing nations trade in U.S. Dollars, so the price in Euros is now 40% cheaper than 2 years ago. Traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, it is quite obvious at the price differential of Dollar based international commodities. Gas prices, at least on both coasts of the U.S., are now about equal to what we pay in Europe, where 6 years ago we paid around 4 times what Americans were paying.

There are a few oil producing nations that have switched from petrodollars to petroeuros, which has seen their income stabilise as the dollar slips. What makes currency traders, central bank managers, and others who work with the U.S. Dollar lose sleep is the fear that some day soon, the rest of the OPEC countries will announce a switch from selling crude oil in Dollars to Euros. That would be a major blow to the stability of the Dollar, and if it were to happen, Americans would see gas prices from $10 to $25 per gallon at the pumps. It would also be a bad thing for Europe, because we would see our pump prices jump by at least 40%, and more likely the increase would be close to 100% as the world economies adjusted to the new "base" currency.

If you are ever in a bar in Brussels full of Eurocrats, and you want to completely derail all the conversations along the lines of a "mac vs. pc" flamefest on /., mention PetroEuros, duck, and run far, far away.

the AC

ObOnTopic post I've managed to use an OLPC XO machine for a while, they are truly innovative little wonders. Even at $175 a piece, that means we'll soon be training up a whole new generation of bitter, jaded sysadmins ;-)

Re:I'm just waiting...

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Personally, I wish Denmark would just join the Euro. Our money is so ugly now that my eyes wants to cry every time I see them. I think this is a conspiracy to make the Danish want to join the Euro. (It works on me, too!)

Yeah, because having pretty notes makes up for the fact that you have interest rates set over the whole eurozone by the somewhat inscrutable ECB, rather than set by (I guess) an independant central bank in Denmark.

Yep. Very independent. Sometimes, it takes hours before it mirrors every ECB decision ;)

The trouble is that DK finance is just too interwoven with (especially) the Swedish, Norwegian, UK and German economy to just go our own way. Since Euro would nail 3 out of 4, I think it would be better.

At least, traveling abroad would be much easier :) (well, unless going out of EU, or going to any of the pockets'o'resistance within, but still).

Re:Why not....?

[DrgnDancer]

Yeah, I was the info systems officer for a National Guard unit in Iraq. We had a mix of hardened laptops and off the shelf desktops. Lemme tell you which ones did better. We lost on average a desktop a month, and all told I had the hard drive on one of the hardened laptops die. This was over a one year period, and we were in decently built climate controlled wood structures. This program will do MUCH better with the laptops assuming they're as well built as claimed.