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If Negreponte's goal is to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children, why would he be angry?

Yes, you can easily run the emulated Sugar environment on a variety of platforms. See this page for emulation instructions.

The core developers run Sugar directly on their Linux desktops. Those instructions are here.

Yes, you can easily run the emulated Sugar environment on a variety of platforms. See this page for emulation instructions.

The core developers run Sugar directly on their Linux desktops. Those instructions are here.

http://laptop.org/ has technical specs for the computer. Wikipedia also has an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1

The hardware specs are over here

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

and you can get software specs at

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/specs.shtml

The hardware specs are over here

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

and you can get software specs at

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/specs.shtml

I'd like to know why there will only be limited quantities available for the NA market. Is there some reason for that? Don't they want to accept as many donations as possible?

The underlying window manager is Matchbox.

There is a Developer Console activity which provides a shell, log viewer, X resource meter, and memory usage meter.

If you want a more adult interface than Sugar, you might be more interested in PepperPad. They are providing an OLPC compatible pre-release containing both a 1.5 JVM and a more adult-oriented environment.

Yeah, it's hidden in their wiki:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Give_One_Get_One

Will the North American Laptops include any human-power system?

no.

The intent is to provide alternative power generation for these laptops. Ideas include human power, animal power, solar, wind, water, etc. See this page for details.

They haven't had a built-in hand crank since the first prototype. The North American ones will come with a standard wall adapter. They are exploring all sorts of power generation ideas, such as a yo-yo shaped pull cord generator. Check here for many of the other ideas.

"Come black friday I guarantee there will be plenty of $400 "real" laptops for sale"

This is one laptop for 200$ US, another one as a tax deductable charitable gift for $200 US.

"Oh, and for those who will say how rugged and durable the OLPC is...yes. But when you can't do jack shit with it even if it survives the trip through a dishwasher...what good is it? As evil as they are, MS is the de facto standard. If you don't know windows you're missing a key skill to join the technology work force. Giving a bunch of kids a one-off linux based laptop leaves out critical skills."

And what might they be? Learning to use a word processor? Check, the XO has this. Browser? Check, XO has this. What exactly does a Windows XP PC have that an XO doesnt? Solitaire? The XO with sugar is a package, its a device capable of browsing, meshed networking, creating documents, and much more. And all of this shared with the rest of the class. If you actually saw the olpc image running, which you can do in an emulator if you download it from their website, you would see that this is a device, in laptop form factor.
I really dont see the point of teaching kids to use Windows Version X and Office version X, when you can give them a specially designed device like the XO and they can use it to access information about *any* OS or software.
After all, are you really suggesting that if these kids were given Windows laptops they would not be able to use a Mac? Or linux? Take a look at the website http://laptop.org/ and see how it works before you draw conclusions. It is not a laptop for you, nor road warriors, nor VC++ developers. It is a device for platform agnostic kids to access and share information.

As for free internet elsewhere, I know that OLPC was at one point making an effort to develop a peer-to-peer system where if there was only one connection available and a lot of XO PC's in an area, they would form a network p2p cluster to share the bandwidth.

Something that would actually help me keep up with the price of gas and heating oil and electricity.

It's got a nice processor, the Geode LX-700.

That's a lot of oomph actually. I know we're all used to our 3ghz desktops, but think about how nice 700mhz(equiv) actually is. I've got a refurbished eMachines 650 in my basement. It plays divx video with no problems.

You could use one of these as a portable entertainment center easy. Or how about a router? The thing is designed for minimum power draw. Use one in your basement as a router that works the way you want it to work.

A sub $200 x86 with that kind of horsepower and power specs has hundreds of uses.

Why would anyone want one of these other than for novelty? It'll sit in your closet after you mess around with it for an hour.

Not really, for example: a lot of the work I do requires only a Web browser, Web server, PHP MySQL (or SQLite if resources are tight) and Vim. The OLPC can handle that nicely. One other thing that really appeals to me is the reading mode. Documentation can be read on the road without worrying that the battery will run out. Have a look at the hardware specs:

This Liquid-crystal display is the basis of our extremely low power architecture. The XO is usable while the CPU and much of the motherboard is regularly turned off (and on) so quickly that it's imperceptible to the user. Huge power savings are harvested in this way (e.g. by turning stuff on the motherboard off when it's not being used (if even for a few seconds), while keeping the display on)

Even if you don't buy one, the XO has advanced laptop technology in some interesting ways.

...the first-hand history of why there is an SD-card slot on the machine is: (1) We needed to add an ASIC to improve NAND access; (2) We took this as an opportunity to add a video camera contoller at minimal additional cost; (3) At essentially no additional cost, we added an SD-card slot to give the kids more options re storing their videos (at the time, we were only planning on .5G of on-board NAND. While it is probably a cleaner solution for MS to take advantage of SD rather than USB, there was not and still is not room on-board for Windows and there has been from Day One external expansion capability.

The wifi driver is GPL (and included in the mainline linux kernel already). The wireless chip firmware is the proprietary part. But, of course, that's more open than most of the chips in the system, which can't be changed in the field at all, and when can't be modified without a chip fab. People are actually working on reverse-engineering the chip specs (it looks like an ARM920T with a radio peripheral), but it's perfectly reasonable to consider the chip as a device with a detailed specification that has a very long, particular, and incomprehensible (but carefully documented) startup sequence.

Then there's this

That's great but if you look at Sugar OS, it was designed for children that can't read English and is culturally independant and has limited functionality just for the class room which is what these laptops are for. They're being built for educational purposes.

Don't you think it's completely stupid to wack XP on them? What is "Start" what is "Programs"? How do I draw things? How do I get web pages? Windows XP demands that you know how to read and it just wasn't designed for what the XO is trying to do.

"the interface is sufficiently proprietary that these kids aren't going to learn how to use a standard GUI"

How is it proprietary, it runs on Redhat, anyone can write to the specs. The interface specs are published here, so anyone can write to it, how does that make it proprietary. How does the OLPC not have a real operating system. It runs a striped down version of Red Hat linux on the Sugar OS">OLPC Human Interface.

As for a standard GUI, once kids have used a GUI then they can quickly adapt to the 'industry standard', by standard I assume you mean the Microsoft GUI, the one you have to go on £700 courses to figure out .. :)

'Kudos to Microsoft for supporting this platform', Microsoft don't want to support the platform, it want to kill it as it would mean less XP licenses sold ..

Re:Exactly what OLPC needs - a real operating system

Looking ate OLPC specifications http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification
I'd say that Microsoft will have the very hard task of running windows XP on these computers.

If XP is slow as hell on a 512Mb RAM Pentium III 600Mhz computer, what would it be on a AMD Geode 433 Mhz 256Mb RAM.

Maybe M$ wanted to say Windows Mobile 5 instead ?

I see the )ASUS EEE (http://eeepc.asus.com/en/ and the OLPC (http://laptop.org/) as it's competition. Both are bigger, but also far more capable and less expensive.

http://laptop.org/

I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet.

BitFrost (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost) is the set of security mechanisms present in the OLPC.

Though I certainly wouldn't care to summarize the entire thing, here's what it comes down to.

User programs don't automatically get the running user's full rights. A calculator has no reason to delete your documents, so why should it be able to? And without your knowledge to boot. On the OLPCs, documents are kept in a special storage area. It isn't a matter of owner read access. In general, for a program to get a user's file poofed in to its chroot sandbox, it has to ask the document service (which presents a consistent dialog). Further, a text editor doesn't need to access the network. The user can access the network, but his or her programs can only do so if explicitly allowed to (various such rights are set at install time, configurable later). Certain combinations of program rights are disallowed at install time (such as both network access and webcam access) but can be enabled later. Plus a lot more.

Sudo/UAC sound nice and all until you realize that programs and users are separate entities.

Yes, there's a lot to learn from the OLPC project. It's designed to be used (safely) by computer-illiterate children who can't (or can scarcely) read. If you think that sounds like a good description of computer users in general, then you're absolutely right. Security as seen in *nix and Windows makes perfect sense for protecting users from each other. That was the goal back in the day. The people with access to a server were supposed to have a general idea of what they were doing (entirely on them if they didn't), and in that case *nix security works well. But computers have gotten more personal, and that assumption is now blatantly false. Anyone thinkng that Windows security problems stop at buffer overflows, or that Linux on the desktop will change anything, is a fool.

You can also get it running with a VMware image, if you're not into qemu. (Mentioned in above post, but not in the link). See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/VMWare They warn that the emulation will be slower than it is on the target device.

The point of the laptop ISN'T to teach about computers.

The XO is meant to replace textbooks. The $100 came from a printing estimate for textbooks over five years, not some grand marketing scheme, and they will hit that, and cheaper, over time. It's also to be more interactive than, say, a text book or even a chalkboard.

The Etoys interface is meant to allow kids to model things like gravity, ecosystems, inclined planes and so on, without needing a lot of adult intervention.

The guys involved have devoted substantial portions of their lives to education. But every genius on Slashdot figures they could do the project better after reading an article. (And probably not even all of that.) And certainly not bothering to read the OLPC website which addresses the issues that come up here time and time again, including the "send them used equipment"

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_mission
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_technology

The point of the laptop ISN'T to teach about computers.

The XO is meant to replace textbooks. The $100 came from a printing estimate for textbooks over five years, not some grand marketing scheme, and they will hit that, and cheaper, over time. It's also to be more interactive than, say, a text book or even a chalkboard.

The Etoys interface is meant to allow kids to model things like gravity, ecosystems, inclined planes and so on, without needing a lot of adult intervention.

The guys involved have devoted substantial portions of their lives to education. But every genius on Slashdot figures they could do the project better after reading an article. (And probably not even all of that.) And certainly not bothering to read the OLPC website which addresses the issues that come up here time and time again, including the "send them used equipment"

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_mission
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_technology

Like most things technology, the real marvel of the OLPC is the software. Have you looked at all the cool apps they're making for that thing? For one example, TamTam is this little music app and you can use the keyboard as a midi controller. There are also paint apps, games, programming exercises.

For a parent, this is exciting stuff! You can pay a lot for a mountain of LeapFrog toys, which are probably a good thing from ages 0-3. Or you can pay $30 a pop for educational software on Windows or Mac, most of which are kind of narrowly designed (not-so-kid-friendly hardware not included). Or you can buy one of these laptops and get nice open ended educational applications with equally really nice kid friendly hardware. Even the typical middle class family spends tons of money on educational toys. They charge a premium for stuff that will hold the attention of a kid, educate them, and not cause serious injury. And parents eat it up because they're crazy like that.

As the software matures, OLPC looks like it could be the educational toy of choice for middle class to upper middle class parents in the United States.

Here's something that might interest those who are thinking about the $400 two-fer, but want to play with XO first...

You can emulate most of it with qemu or vmware. It's easy.

    See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO/Quick_Start

Seemed a pretty sluggish on my wimpy Core Duo 1.66, but lots of that may be due to a lack of hardware accelerated video in qemu.

Anyhow, check it out. Good times.

(It does seem odd to use Python as the primary language on a slow CPU with little memory, but it seems to work okay...)

From http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home

OLPC espouses five core principles: (1) child ownership; (2) low ages; (3) saturation; (4) connection; and ***(5) free and open source.***

Someone else can run with option 5, to make an equivalent, for adults laptop. Depending on performance, we may finally see a machine mass-produced, showing acceptable speed and avertising that it's doing so despite "under-powered" hardware.

If this was mass-produced, people would finally have reason to question: why do I need this super-great/expensive machine for the latest OS? Sure we have plenty of tiny OSes out there, Puppy Linux, D*** Small Linux and various others from scratch. The problem is the same that kept Linux from the spotlight... it's not pre-installed on PCs sitting on store shelves.

(Sure the above efficiency question is asked frequently from one version of Windows to the next, but default installs of Linux flavors trying to be mainstream-ready are a bit slow on older hardware as well.)

I can't wait to see the results on the marketplace...

You, too, are missing the point of the laptop. The creator of the project, Nicholas Negroponte, said that "It's an education project, not a laptop project." (Source: http://www.laptop.org/vision/index.shtml) Getting a commercial version is the last thing on the list of things to do.

For those wondering what the software actually looks like when it's running, wonder no more. You can download a VMware image that will run the XO operating system, with its installed software. There's directions for installing it on their wiki. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/VMWare) P.S. For those commenting that XO looks like a skull and crossbones, look at their site icon on the wiki and you'll get what they were going for.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_Charging Not entirely clear but it says it has LiFePO4 as well as NiMH but there's no real info on the LiFePO4. Are they two seperate options or is the LiFePO4 treated as a buffer for a main NiMH cells?

http://laptop.org/ you have to see the actual logo to understand.

I also don't think you understand the marketing costs and risk associated with a mass retail marketing effort, particular of a product which is designed for the specific needs of a very different one than you are trying to market it to at retail.

The skull and crossbones is the child. See the website.

No it does not come with OOo or The Gimp. It comes with custom software instead. See http://laptop.org/laptop/software/specs.shtml or read wiki.laptop.org.

Given that he's using a 7-year old laptop, I doubt that peak performance is the key factor in this purchase.

I'd also not call the OLPC "considerably lower in performance" to the T20 - they're just differently-optimized devices (i.e., weight, battery life, ruggedness), both of which would handle most non-intensive work. Here are the OLPC specs, while here are the T20 specs.

Sorry, Nov. 12 (though I thought it was supposed to be the 11th...).

Also, the people involved don't have any direct ties to the Chinese government, much less Myanmar/Burma.

Here's a thought: an OLPC laptop. Decent (if low-end) specs, supports charity, and durable.

As was brought up recently, you can buy one starting Nov. 11 if you live in the U.S.

Read the FAQ: http://www.xogiving.org/faq.html

Your school board is already spending thousands of dollars a year on your nephews education. They can easily buy new laptops for every kid in your area. And load Sugar, the XO laptops software, on all of them. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_components

As eBay is a founding OLPC member, I imagine they'll be policing any OLPC XO listings closely. The thieves and budget-conscious gadget hounds may have to find a different online auction site.

Note: They provide developer machines for free, if you can propose a worthwhile project. The offer in TFA is just for people who want to own one.

You thought wrong. The laptop is now known as the XO-1 laptop (they have not been able to maintain the price within the original estimation, it is today priced at $188).

I thought this was the $100 laptop?

You thought wrong. The laptop is now known as the XO-1 laptop (they have not been able to maintain the price within the original estimation, it is today priced at $188).

As a side note, IMHO the software development and integration efforts that are happening on the OLPC project are fantastic. All the companies involved in this project are providing their best engineers: Marvell (who made the wireless chip) have their guys developing the firmware often directly according to the feedback they get from the kernel developers, Red Hat is providing plenty of sw engineers (including Marcelo Tosati, who was the 2.4 kernel maintainer!), AMD and Quanta are working on the hardware platform (recently they made efforts to track the power consumption of every single chip in the laptop), etc. This is just incredible how fast the teams are able to progress in such a cooperative environment. This is a sharp contrast with what happens too often in the ordinary Linux world where cooperation is sometimes difficult or inexistent (e.g. kernel developers unable to obtain hardware specs, or hardware vendors attempting to provide some crappy binary drivers without involving the kernel community, etc).

I certainly expect a very high quality product to come out of this project, both on the hardware level and software level. Every single piece of chip or software has been optimized and fine-tuned to make the whole platform work as best as it can. This is going to be one of the best Linux laptop ever made. Just read their weekly updated news page to get a brief understanding of the technical achievements made possible in such an ultra-cooperative environment: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/News