Intel, Microsoft Despised the XO Laptop 521
gregsim writes "The Wall Street Journal today reports that the new XO laptop, centerpiece of the One Laptop Per Child project, is stimulating an active response from both Intel and Microsoft. The companies evidently feel threatened by the little upstart, intended to help third-world children. (The XO runs Linux and uses AMD chips.) Microsoft has cut their software to $3 each and Intel has designed their own laptop called the Classmate to sell between $230 and $300, nearly double the XO's price. Rather than defend the relative merits of his creation, professor Negroponte is crying foul and (if the article is to be believed) not even arguing the technical merits. The initial demand for the XO has fallen well below Mr. Negroponte's projections as Intel and Microsoft have successfully argued that their entries are superior. 45,000 have been ordered through the Give One, Get One campaign. I am happy that I ordered mine — it will be a landmark model in any case."
Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Waste of time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft and Intel put Negreponte out of 'business' by selling subsidised low-cost PCs, how long do you think they'll continue to sell them afterwards?
They're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, they're doing it because they see a competitor they want to eliminate.
Re:Competition is good (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Waste of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Fighting a non profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Negroponte is surprised about the actual demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk is cheap.
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure who I'm madder at: Intel & Microsoft for their transparent claims of "trying to help", the potential recipients of the XO who are being fooled into not ordering it, or folks like you who are not seeing any problem with this whole cock-up.
Re:Ah, the canonical monopoly response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition is always welcomed, or so says everyone here
Do _you_ still say so, after this scenario?
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS and Intel want to seriously get -- and STAY -- in the game of providing system for the developing world, that's great. The concern is that they'll produce just enough press releases for the XO to stop getting orders it needs to stay viable, then once the XO is basically dead, MS/Intel say "oh, well now that we look at the market, we really think tour new $500 design is more appropriate". Then it would take another year or three for the XO or something similar to get back into production. Anyone with more than a few months of experience in the computer industry is familiar with this pattern.
As a side note, I was shocked when my sister, who is about as technical as "my computer's cupholder is broken!" actually mentioned the "buy one get one" promotion over Thanksgiving. They've done a great job marketing, even if my sister didn't have any idea what the program was about or what made the computer unusual, she just knew about it as the $150 laptop.
Re:Competition is good (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect he expects his initiative to fail. Not for lack of merit, but simply the gross inadequacy of the decision makers in most countries. Bribery is the norm in international trade, and the need to appear powerful must be near universal among politicians. Microsoft is powerful, Linux is not. So go where the power is. Additionally, ' branding ' works in all societies. He will not be expecting a kiddies book ending here.
Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
It is hard to blame Microsoft entirely, since they can't exactly compete with free. Intel, on the other hand, has no excuse. If they were truly acting competitively, they would try to sell Negroponte on their processors and compete with AMD (you know, their actual competitor) that way, and not screw over those kids in the process.
Re:That's great (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Monopolies are bad. This is a clear case of a monopoly using its power to stifle long term competition at a short term profit loss.
Do you honestly think Microsoft would offer both an OS and Office for $3 if it wasn't trying to stifle competition? As soon as the OLPC project is broke and a memory, expect the price of Microsoft's software to increase exponentially.
3rd world needs to figure out birth control first (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Negroponte's Dumb Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Found the Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
So perhaps you have some ideas about how vendor support will be provided by the likes of Microsoft?
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
If the people buying these machines aren't spending their own money, and intel or microsoft offer them some money into their own back pocket in exchange for spending more of someone else's money, what do you think they'll do?
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me see who defends capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
But in this case, companies are entering a [new] market in order to kill competition. No wonder, even in the so called developed capitalist markets of the industrialized world like Canada, no foreigner can own a majority stake in the telecommunications sector for example.
Re:this whole thing stinks and I don't like it. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of places where people are surviving and have basics like clean water, but are still poor. This is something intended to give them more opportunities, it isn't the only thing they need. (Sending food, by the way, usually just ruins the local farmers and/or fattens the pockets of warlords.)
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They can break anything... (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom is more valuable than choice. (Score:3, Insightful)
The "choice" argument is one used by software proprietors and their sympathizers to make non-free alternative seem equal to free software. Dependency and separation, an imposed inability to help oneself is far worse than independence, helping one's community, and social solidarity.
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3rd world needs to figure out birth control fir (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if the market is actually free (of biased legislation, etc.)
Business 101, Gates Foundation (Score:1, Insightful)
If they can sell a machine for 2x what he does, I guess there is some pricing flexibility he can leverage OR he can focus on even poorer nations. He should stop moaning and focus on sales and charity.
On another note- I have to imagine that allot of people out there would love to buy his machines in bulk and give them out. I wonder if no one wants to piss off the Gates Foundation? Ether friends or potential recipients... Wouldn't that be a twist - LOL.
BTW: If Gates decides that his new Wintel boxes are the key to both Windows' future and kids' education there will be MILLIONS of these things built in the next few years.
Re:Waste of time (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel's Sucker Punch. Tech Merits are Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Behold "peace" with Intel and M$:
but
Par for the Wintel course, self restraint is foolish because M$ and Intel will always pull every trick they can. When convicted monopolists urge you to hold back, listening to them is the worst thing you can do. Intel traded a few million dollars for what's going to millions of units in sales. That's too bad, because Windoze is the wrong OS for the job.
It's easy to see that the usual one size fits all Windoze is not useful to school children, especially those in the developing world. It's designed for US fortune 500 businesses and to satisfy the wants of the MAFIAA. It's dependent on a $400 "office" suite for the most basic of paper writing in English and it has little else. Native editing and authoring tools are pathetic, networking is designed for an office LAN and media tools are designed to extract money from rich US college students rather than to encourage creativity. Foreign language support in Windoze is pathetic, as you would expect from software that can't take corrections in the field. All of this can be said about M$'s latest and greatest OS. I'm scared of what they have to offer for $3. Any developing nation that wants to see what will happen to the Intel machine has only to look at what happens to the millions of used laptops the developed world disposes of daily in their backyard. Laptops being tossed out by the developed world are more powerful and have better software but could be used right now by developing nations for next to nothing. They are not used because they are not well suited to the task and Wintel laptops that make it to the developing world today are sent there as toxic waste. OLPC addressed all of these concerns in their design.
Re:Negroponte's Dumb Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
That particular idea is fundamentally flawed. If there is one thing that we have learned from the technology-based industry in the western world, it's that the vast majority of people have absolutely no ability to work in it. It's not like farming - if you can hold a stick, you can be a farmer. To write custom software worth paying for takes ten years of near-full-time experience and practice, a flexible mind, and the ability to think. People in the third world are not going to be any better at doing these things than we are, and we suck at it. A small handful will be able to do it, probably will do it, and will get disproportionate attention in the media. The vast majority will accomplish nothing at all. You do not turn farmers into knowledge-based workers by giving them a laptop. There are no short cuts in establishing a modern-style economy across half a planet - it takes centuries of work, in education, industry, construction, and technological development. Nothing that you can put into a media soundbite will accomplish a damn thing.
If this endeavour is going to have any benefits at all (and that's pretty questionable - whether it's worthwhile is open to debate, but it is definitely not certain that it will be), this is not going to be one of them.
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
I call false dichotomy. They could also be doing it because it is an emerging market they want to enter. Also, ClassmatePC comes with Linux as a (cheaper) option. Further the target markets are slightly different. XO is aimed at primary school children while the more capable (and slightly more expensive) Classmate is aimed at secondary school children.
Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
You are making the typical rich-white-kid mistake of looking at people in a developing country, picking out the aspect of their life that you would like the least, and assuming that that's their biggest problem. In reality, however, mud huts are irrelevant. They're low on prestige, but in a practical sense they're a pretty good form of housing in that environment. Whereas education is critical, and these computers address that problem directly.
Re:Negroponte's Dumb Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I said work in intellectual property including custom software. Today, a few thousand people with these laptops could probably make more than they do now, by solving captchas. Pretty much anyone can learn to be literate and to read/write several languages with a few years of training, so they can be paid for translation work and editing. Then there is original content production, data entry, etc.
Right, so they're no better at it than we are, but have a thousand times the unemployment rate in some localities and will work for one one hundredth the cost.
First, they aren't farmers now, they're children without much in the way of skills because farming does not pay enough to pay taxes on the land when the US is giving the same food away for free. You turn them into knowledge based workers by giving them a laptop and network access and a wealth of educational data and software specifically designed to be easy to modify for their entire childhood. It is called an education, and growing up with a basic laptop, wikipedia, and internet access will allow them to develop computing skills as they grow. Did you have access to a computer when you were young? Do you know many people who program who did not?
Does the phrase "modern-style economy" actually mean anything? An economy is an economy and providing tools that educate and are usable, certainly can make a real difference.
Okay your skepticism is noted. That said, this is the best effort I've ever seen to provide a sustainable income for people growing up in some of these countries. If you think giving up is a better idea, then there is not a lot of point talking to you, otherwise; let's hear your better and more effective idea.
Re:Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "competition" (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, both Microsoft and (especially, in this particular case) Intel use their market clout to *shut out* the OLPC. They are basically buying off governments or distributors to the point that OLPC isn't facing competition-- it's not getting a chance to compete.
That's the problem with unbridled corporatism (which is what we are seeing, rather than capitalism). Corporations get to the point that *they* are afraid to face real competition, so they do what they can to ensure competition never gets a chance to take root. This includes non-market avenues like controlling distribution or buying off governments.
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Because Windows 2000 and Windows XP weren't bad operating systems. Flaws, yes. Unsuitable for most users at home or at the office, no. I've not used Vista yet so cannot comment there, but there are reasons why the Windows OS's were successful. We have a decent alternative now , but we didn't a six years ago. Hence the current market position MS has. It's not the best solution for developing countries that have more options than people in the USA and Western Europe did, however. That is why I would like to see the OLPC with Linux become the de facto standard for a while.
Re:Ah, the canonical monopoly response... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the problem. Competition is good, but fake competition (selling a product you don't want to sell, to ward off a potential future threat to the market you care about) is not good.
Re:the nature of the competitive threat (Score:5, Insightful)
In the USA many jobs require some basic knowledge of computer concepts, like files and folders, user accounts and passwords, use of a mouse, etc. They also require knowledge of word processor use, spreadsheets, e-mail, web browsing, etc. For those uses, Windows, Linux and OS X are interchangeable.
The XO operating system is a little further out there, because the UI is quite different from Windows or mainstream Linux distributions, but even there the differences aren't going so large that significant retraining is required. Especially since the XO is specifically designed to encourage exploration and make its users comfortable with the computer, rather than afraid of it. A user who is willing to explore a little and understands basic concepts can easily figure out how to get the job done, without a lot of remedial training.
Even more important than all of that is the simple fact that we're talking about kids who aren't going to be in the workforce for years, and during that time the systems are going to change -- probably more radically than they have in the last 10 years. The key is to understand what computers are and how they work, and for that purpose the XO is a significantly better system than any variety of Windows. I think kids who grow up using an XO laptop will probably be more capable of using a Windows 8 system than kids who grow up on Windows.
Finally, odds are that in the parts of the world where lots of XO laptops are used, when the kids enter the workforce they won't be using Windows anyway. That, of course, is what terrifies Microsoft.
Re:Competition is good (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately, in practice, it's difficult to promote one without promoting the other.
Reasonable experts can disagree about whether a particular competitive action is "appropriate" or "unfair".
And no legal or regulatory framework can possibly hope to have enough subtlety to promote helpful competition without also triggering competition that smothers.
You are asking for behavior that actually requires a tremendous amount of delicacy and finesse.
You're effectively asking MS/Intel to allow new sources of competition to flourish, but then to gradually compete more and more vigorously as their competition becomes increasingly more robust.
It's kind of like asking a 1000-pound man to tap-dance with speed, precision, and artistic flair. Nobody seriously expects you to get what you're asking for.
The law is far too blunt of an instrument to compel companies to nurture their competition exactly enough so that they promote growth without killing it.
Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an important point, and it's why we're seeing so much effort from Microsoft.
The more Linux machines that get out to real users, through the OLPC, Asus EEEPC, Nokia N810 and other similar machines, the clearer it will become how much of a lie that disadvantage claim is.
A successful OLPC project would show the world definitively that an expensive, proprietary, antifeature-laden [fsf.org] OS is an unnecessary waste of money and resources.
Would a starving ethernopian...
Ethernopian?
Christ, at least with enough OLPC using kids out there we might get some decent discussions on Slashdot, not more of this ignorant, bigoted astroturf.
Not a Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
The major point is that their project was free/libre opensource based. It could have been emulated by any one else. And whole point of Negroponte is that one day, as those kids grow up, they would be able to easily start their own computer technology project, based on knowledge they acquired learning on tools like the OLPC and using technology and ressources available freely for them to base they project on, thanks to F/L-OSS.
It's not a monopoly to Negroponte because their technology isn't locked into their own hands at all.
Your analogies are bad.
It's not Pespi or Coke, it's OpenCola and Vores Øl (recipes freely available on wikipedia for every one to use) against both of those corporation.
It's not BigMac or Super...whateverstuffyoumentionned, it's home grilled buger on your own backyard grill (without any intellectual property lawsuits involved) against the fast-food corps.
The main purpose behind this is bring those kids a tool that they can subsequently own themselves and do whatever they want to do. This is possible with free/libre software, because that's the whole point for which the GPL license and the FreeSoftware Foundation where created.
This wouldn't be possible with microsoft in the play, because whatever happens with the Classmate, the software running on it will continue to be the private property of Microsoft. Everything one could dream to do with it will have to be done only after obtaining license. Even if it may cost only 3$ currently, it remains in the hand of a foreign US company.
XO Laptop is about empowering the current learning kids, and giving them something that they can control.
Classmate and $3 Microsoft softwares is about creating a steady stream of future consumer which have been raised into sheepishly thinking that information technology is only something that come from a foreign US company, and who could one day buy Microsoft's future software at whatever price they decide then.
Re:Ah, the canonical monopoly response... (Score:4, Insightful)
XO: The O is for Obnoxious (Score:2, Insightful)
It's also obnoxious because they initially weren't going to sell them here. They're only doing it now as a desperate measure, and they still force you to buy a donation. So what's not good enough for us is good enough for Africa? Boo.
It's obnoxious because it missed its $100 price by a factor of 2 -- they even had to change the name of the product.
But nothing takes the cake like *complaining* when the sales you thought were destiny don't materialize. Oh yeah, it's the competition's fault! Weak. Presumably Negroponte thinks the competition is evil because they're for-profit. That's like Microsoft complaining about Linux being free.
But there is something good about the OLPC: it's gotten much farther than any other Media Lab project to date. How to really help the Third World: take the millions blown at the Media Lab on barely-functioning undergrad art "installations" and put it towards some Logo schools. Or maybe even just -- gasp -- regular schools.
-Carl
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
"I don't really see how laptops will improve education anyway. Wasn't the goal to give these to kids in areas that don't even have electricity all the time? Instead of pouring money into laptops, wouldn't it be better to pour money into building schools and infrastructure and hiring teachers? Sounds like a better investment IMO."
False dichotomy. There are other foundations and NGOs that build schools and hire teachers. Negroponte, being the techhead that he is, wants to distribute laptops. If they help kids with their math and reading, then more power to him.
Keep in mind that lots of these laptops are going to places where they already do have schools and teachers, but they cannot afford to provide computers for the students. This is where the program steps in. As for your fundamental question of how having PCs will improve education, in these cases, it will improve education in the same manner that having access to PCs improved our education. Sure, we could have done with pads of paper and pens, but it would have righteously sucked.
"In any case, I think DRM is bad in an educational setting. Do you really want kids learning that DRM is just the way it's done?"
How does DRM even apply here? Because the kids won't be able to make copies of the stuff they're buying from iTunes? Because they can't make copies of games and DVDs for their friends? If they're running into DRM, odds are that they're not using the computers for their intended purpose.
Re:Three Intel MYTHs Busted Here (Score:3, Insightful)
You're walking on the ceiling (Score:2, Insightful)
of the next floor down.
You know, looking at the world upside down.
It's infel's Classmate that is trying to be the cheap "everyman's computer".
Or, I could correct your little composition:
All those who are worried about support can go to the olpc wiki and look at the pilot projects in progress. The only reason there would be logistics problems is if infel and Micro$oft deliberately interfered.
If that would have been true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the same money. Much of the investment in OLPC is from high tech companies, which would not be contributing to more "mundane" causes if not for the OLPC. And government investment would go to other IT projects if not this one; that's the point of TFA, Intel and Microsoft are taking shares of the pie. If not for OLPC, probably MORE would (or will) be spent on these.
And if you still insist on the "one pot" theory, why not complain about the millions of dollars spent on Mercedes Benz for government ministers in impoverished countries? Billions spent on weapons? Fortunes spent on cosmetics? More billions spent on cigarettes and alcohol? Why pick on the OLPC to pick up the tab?