$100 Laptop Repriced at $175 323
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.'"
I'm just waiting... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm just waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm just waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm just waiting... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Not sure what that proves.
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francs, francs . . . let me see, Ah yes! that old outmoded currency of France. I have some right here. They're collectors items now. 1 franc to the dollar if you ask me.
(I have one of each denom up to 500 if you're dumb^W interested eno
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Yeah, Europeans should be very worried. Their stores are getting flooded by cheap american imports that local companies can not compete with under a 50% premium. Their jobs are getting outsourced to US. They are losing their import market to US companies that are able to offer a much better price. European tourists go and spend money abroad rather than investing it back into local econ
Re:I'm just waiting... (Score:4, Funny)
When I went to school, a strong currency was bad for the business living off exports and local sale, and good the business doing imports. Mind you, that was long ago :)
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!)
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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:I'm just waiting... (Score:4, Informative)
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
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
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A fast change in the exchange rate is.
Why not....? (Score:2, Interesting)
"one laptop per child"
which are devices that hardly fit the description of "rugged"..
why aren't we going for:
"One desktop per family"?
Much easier to repair when broken, and that lends itself better to donations of old equipment.
Re:Why not....? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very few people live in mud huts (Score:3, Interesting)
People don't want to be locked into something, so they fix things themselves.
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If we go for desktop machines, there are two approaches:
** Custom-built **
All machines would be the same. Yes, you can swap parts, but the system as a whole will be more expensive. Pluggable cards means a bigger case (more money), more connectors (more money), more board space (more money), more mounting hardware (more money), and more complex assembly (more money).
** Ad-hoc systems **
This uses hardware "cast-offs," such as outdated technology (would be great for the environment,
Re:Why not....? (Score:4, Informative)
So in hot, dusty under-developed countries, it is a problem. And the OLPC's membrane keyboard and sealed widgets are certainly welcome.
Re:Why not....? (Score:4, Informative)
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Alternatively, if you're so smart - you obviously have all the answers - where's your program to help the uneducated poor of the world? Oh, right, it's easy to bag someone else's project than do something yourself.
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At least you, had the civility to maintain your cool when posting your reply. If you are tired of such comments too, then you are proof that your don't need to be an ass to get a point across. Anyways, Thank yo
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You should never use the lack of an immediate solution be the reason you don't point out a problem.
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of calling it the $100 laptop in the first place? It's su
Incidentally (Score:2)
Should I stop complaining about the world's energy crisis since I don't have a solution to the problem?
Incidentally, I have a partial solution to the developed world's energy crisis: decriminalize low-THC strains of hemp. But then the synthetic fiber industry would bitch about having to compete with hemp fiber, and the oil industry would bitch about having to compete with hemp oil, and these big industries bitch with their dollars.
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of calling it the $100 laptop in the first place?
As I understand it, it hasn't been officially the "$100 laptop" for a while. The laptop developed by OLPC is called XO-1 [wikipedia.org].
Re:Why not....? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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One advantage is part of Jet Blue's maintenance model. Standardizing on one design means that parts are probably easier to manage and inventory, and training and documentation can be simplified. And if you had to, you can part out one device and possibly make five other broken units, assuming the broken part in each unit is different. Working with donated computers means
There is no desktop. (Score:3, Interesting)
The laptops *desktop* is in fact a load of icons which show your position within the community of laptops. It is a very cool idea.
As for Rugged. The laptops are extremely rugged and are designed to be very portable, work with
The price will go down when they get more volume. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't news, they've been saying this for over a year now.
Re:The price will go down when they get more volum (Score:2)
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Expressed interest (Score:4, Insightful)
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May be able to soon. (Score:2)
Since the specifications are all open, there's nothing to stop them from just running off a few thousand on speculation when they're done with the ones they're making on contract for OLPC, if they think there's a demand.
Since they're an OEM (a real OEM, not "we buy stuff and stamp our name on it" OEM) the big t
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So it sounds like governments are starting to put their money on the table.
Re:Expressed interest (Score:5, Informative)
OLPC would qualify as vapourware if:
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.
Needs a new name (Score:5, Funny)
me thinks kids in inner city schoos ... (Score:2)
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Do you remember a while back were they were saying buy a OLPC for a kid for $200 or so? I'm wondering how long they have known about this price and sat on it?
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Fuckin' a, buddy. I'm all in favor of helping humanity, that is other humans, in any way possible, but every time someone looks to take on a humanitarian aid project they look to do it overseas.
Our schools here in the US are total shitboxes (most of them, and not as bad as those in some other countries), we have starving people just like everywhere else, homelessness is on the rise, New Orleans is still somewhere between the stone age and the 21st century, etc., etc., etc.
Keeping stuff like this out of
Re:me thinks kids in inner city schoos ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you be upset if your boss told you "Okay bub, do this, this, and this. But I'm not gonna pay you for it since you're doing such a good job already."
And as for our schools being shitboxes I've got a questionnaire I'd like to ask you:
1.) Can you read?
2.) Can you write coherently?
3.) Can you do mathematics?
4.) Do you have a job that is not simply menial in nature?
5.) Do you have a decent understanding that there is a world outside your state?
6.) Were your parents able to work while you were growing up?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you may have benefited from a free public education.
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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:me thinks kids in inner city schoos ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that some people believe that other places have the opposite problem of the USA; whereas the USA has too many resources and not enough personal responsibility, there is a belief that other places, especially third world countries, have personal responsibility but not enough resources. So the goal of projects like this is to try to help people who, it is believed, would actually make something out of themselves given the chance, instead of squander whatever resources are spent to attempt to help them better themselves.
My personal opinion is that, the difference between the uneducated in the USA and the uneducated in a third world country is likely to be alot less than what other people may believe. I have been to a decent number of places in the world and the thing which strikes me most is that people everywhere are pretty much the same. The only real difference is the larger circumstances, usually beyond their control, that they find themselves living in. I think that more children in a third world country would benefit from something like OLPC than would children in the USA, but more because of their circumstances than anything else. In both cases, I think the number of actual children who will benefit from being given a free laptop with educational tools on it is not as high as philanthropists would like to believe.
That being said, I am a 100% supporter of OLPC because, first I think it's a cool project from a technical standpoint, and second, I think it *will* provide some benefit to today's generation of third-world children, and that this benefit will be multiplied as these children grow up and can help to educate even more of the next generation of third-world children. Also I like to hope that I am wrong in my assessment of humanity, and that things will go much better than I would have predicted.
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On the other hand, if you're interested in starting a project to help inner city schools, why don't you?
I'm doing volunteer math tutoring ... (Score:2)
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Prove it.
No wait, if you're proving something, you're using logic, which is a math skill.
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Cheaper Next Year (Score:2)
Governments? (Score:2)
Re:Governments? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
€100 laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not enough (Score:2, Informative)
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Do a basic amount of research before you post.
For. Fuck. Sake.
The real reason why Argentina is not buying (Score:2)
(*) De Vido: Current argentine minister of infrastructure, accused of collecting some "extra" money in every government contract (for more info please google "argentina skanska scandal").
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Getting that first 3 million orders. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I'd pony up ~$400-$500 for a unit. I wonder how many orders at that price point would be enough to get manufacturing cranking.
Plus, from my way of thinking, the OLPC project could use some more content creators doing homebrew design on the OLPC hardware.
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Long answer: you would need some form of "pre-order" organisation that collects all the money and takes care of distribution. They would need to collect 3 million orders, secure the funds, then place the order with the manufacturer, get the units, box them, label them for delivery, arrange 3 million pickups.. pay for those pickups. Refund anyone who changed their mind. Locate others to take the unsold merchandise off their hands. Then, fin
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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.
And if Microsoft or Sony did this? (Score:2)
Shrug and say "it doesn't really matter, it's still cheap and the price will come down as economies of scale kick in?"
Re:And if Microsoft or Sony did this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should we judge the OLPC project by the same standards that we judge multinational profit machines?
Why do I even have to ask this question?
What is wrong with you?
Jesus H. Christ.
Re:And if Microsoft or Sony did this? (Score:4, Insightful)
This post usually gets one of two responses: "It would not be the same because..." or "Slashdot is not one person, the members of the slashdot community can disagree with each other."
Re:And if Microsoft or Sony did this? (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of putting a laptop in the hands of somebody who can't afford the technology is very appealing. We like it. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we want to be part of that. Look at the other posts that say they'd spend $500 to buy one for themselves if they'd also send one to the originally intended recipients. That's a very strong statement of support. If the price goes to $175... well, who can really fault us for not willing to take back that we like the idea that low cost computers are being given to people who could really really could use them.
It wouldn't matter who made the mp3 player. Nobody wants to hear about a significant price increase on a plentiful commodity like an mp3 player. There's too much competition and Microsoft, explicitly, has a long history of credibility problems with delivering on their marketing claims in their product in the first place.
Aren't there a host of things missing from Vista? Aren't we all aware that the "revolutionary" new file structure got cut and that DRM was a priority? For Microsoft, you reap what you sow.
So I reject your comparison. We're not assholes (as your suggest - or at least, not for this reason), we just want to see the OLPC thing succeed.
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Kind of cool but is this really worth it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Best Buy is currently selling a laptop, retail!, for $399. $399 laptop [bestbuy.com]
And the specs on it are actually not half bad, not as bad as you might think:
15.4" screen
1.5 ghz Via C7-M
512 ram
128 meg shared video
DVD +/- DL burner
60 GB HDD
802.11 b/g
10/100 ethernet
v.92 modem
Vista Basic
Drop Vista and install Linux and you can save a few bucks, scale down the screen size and maybe eliminate a few usb ports and some other stuff, mass produce it and you could have a full on pc capable of running even windows vista for probably under 300 bucks. I have to think that something like that would be much more useful, even if you bought half as many it would still be better in the long run with it's upgradeability and standards compliance. Thoughts?
Re:Kind of cool but is this really worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the specs on it are actually not half bad, not as bad as you might think:
15.4" screen
1.5 ghz Via C7-M
512 ram
128 meg shared video
DVD +/- DL burner
60 GB HDD
802.11 b/g
10/100 ethernet
v.92 modem
Vista Basic
Just one question: Where would you plug it in? Most of the people destined to use these have no mains power.
Re:Kind of cool but is this really worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean add a few bucks. There's a price break for crapware. It pays for the cost of Windows and then some.
neutering the technology
No harddrive less memory, but better LCD, more efficient and flexible OS. Not to mention wireless meshing capability. It's specifically designed to interact with other devices of its kind and to display information - only allowing for simple mechanisms, crude mechanisms for data input.
Its exactly like a high-end PDA.
Is a PDA a neutered PC? Is a golf cart a neutered car? Is a housecat a neutered lion?
It's a different beast.
So while this computer is cool how will it's usefulness fare long term when people discover they can't do all the stuff people are doing with their normal computers in the developed world?
"S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu'ils mangent de la brioche."
Assuming that they could get PCs, about as well as PDAs fare in the developed world. Really, though, the point is that every single dollar counts.
Re:Kind of cool but is this really worth it? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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the fine print (Score:2)
The original marketing strategy to nickle-and-dime buyers to death with tantalizing upgrades has been revamped to a dime-and-quarter schema.
From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
AND
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!
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My two cents (Score:5, Funny)
Economic Reality Knocking (Score:2, Interesting)
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Obviously (Score:2)
Cheops' Law (Score:5, Informative)
Corresponding change in project name... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:DAMN IT, SLASHDOT!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Alright, I'll get it over with: *ahem* Ding, dong, the witch is dead
Now thats over with, onto the more notable laptop. Got to say, still excited about this project. Last time I held a computer class in the DR, a massive power surge nearly killed me when the computer in question was powered up... These little things should be able to take the abuse, and the unstable power grids of many of these developing countries. Still cannot wait until a consumer model is released, so I can prepair a few classes on them for next time I go down.
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No. They were, but not anymore (unless I'm mistaken, the current human-power plan involves a foot pump).
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Yeah ok, bad joke, it's been a long day...
I was thinking these people could afford $100. Now its $175, I think, gentlemen and (gentlemen dressed as) ladies that we have found our proverbial 3rd step:
1. Create Idea for $100 laptop
2. Market Laptop
3. Raise Price by 75%
4. Profit.
No more 3. ??? jokes a
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Re:DAMN IT, SLASHDOT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
A million school children with an ability to appreciate freedom of information, and the open source ideals that are the antithesis of Valenti's anti-copying propaganda... I just think of it as Jack's ideas being dead along with him.
On a more serious note, as for the priorities, should I stock up on beer or snacks for the Jack Valenti is Dead party?
Re:No story here. (Score:5, Informative)
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:No story here. (Score:4, Informative)
5000 rupee laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's designed for kids and people who have never used a computer before.
Just because you can only see one use for a particular application, doesn't mean that that's all it's good for.
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