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OLPC Gets a New Name, New Features
pickyouupatnine writes "According to a story on Ars Technica, the $100 MIT Laptop is now going to cost $140. It has a new name — it'll now be called the Children's Machine 1 (CM1). The added price comes with new features! The laptop will now come with a 400 MHz AMD processor, 512 Megs of Flash storage, an SD card slot, mic and headphone jacks, a built in camera, built-in wireless, and an 8-inch LCD at a 1280x900 resolution." From the article: "Tremendous progress has been made this summer on the Sugar user interface system that will be shipped with the CM1. Funded by Google through the Summer of Code (SoC) initiative, intrepid college student Erik Pukinskis has collaborated with the GNOME development community to adapt AbiWord for use with the portable Linux system. Although still experimental, AbiWord has successfully been integrated into the Sugar environment. Artists and developers continue to work on the evolving Sugar interface, and the fruits of their labor can be seen in demoes, mockups, and design reviews."
Within 2 years, the price will be below 100. It is 100 now, and has more features. This is a great deal.
"8-inch LCD at a 1280x900 resolution."
That is in monochrome, specifically for displaying ebooks. The color LCD is supposedly a quarter of this resolution (according to wikipedia), likely because each color pixel is made up of 4 color components (according to wikipedia it may be a RG-GB config). So, in monochrome mode, the color filter is somehow removed and each of those 4 components can create their own monochrome pixel.
Negroponte has consistently said the price would start above $100 and migrate below that price point.
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2006 April 4th http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70584-0.ht
"In time, Negroponte expects the $100 laptop to be a misnomer. For one thing, he believes the cost -- which is actually about $135 now and isn't expected to hit $100 until 2008 -- can drop to $50 by 2010 as more and more are produced."
Here's a quote from their wiki: "Will OLPC spin-off a commercial subsidiary? The idea is that a commercial subsidiary could manufacture and sell a variation of the OLPC in the developed world. These units would be marked up so that there would be a significant profit which can be plowed into providing more units in countries who cannot afford the full cost of one million machines. The discussions around this have talked about a retail price of 3× the cost price of the units. "
Have you ever used OS X on a 400MHz machine with 256M of RAM? If not, I wouldn't recommend it.
Also, please provide the source code for OS X.
My other car is first.
CRM 114 instead
> Actually, children are better served by a teacher who cares about his/her work and genuinely challanges them to actually exercise the mass of grey matter that is so devoid of thought in current times.
Believe it or not, that's one of the important points Papert makes in his book! He decried the typical use of the classroom computer as a mere testtaking machine, or as a means to further solidify the status quo of the school lesson plan. Papert argued that, in addition to acquiring more computers and making them more available to students and teachers alike, schools need to find ways of using computers to *change the teaching process itself*.
Sadly, Papert also pointed out that such an educational revolution would be met with resistance by none other than the education system itself. To paraphrase the book, the system must protect its own existence, and it seeks to maintain the state of that existence. It will fight any threat to either one until all avenues have been exhausted.
After all these years, "The Children's Machine" has proven to be uncannily accurate.
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
Worst of all, Steve Jobs offered OS X for this laptop TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE.
Jobs offered OS X to the one laptop per child program late in the day, knowing that it was unsuitable due to lack of source. It was simply grandstanding on his part. Frankly, I can't think of a non-malicious reason for Jobs to make the offer, (why knowingly offer something useless?). Job's crack at the OLPC project wasn't as childish & pathetic as Gate's, but make no mistake - it was similar jealousy that prompted it.
And if you're wondering why the source is so important, wonder no further - have a read of the OLPC's OLPC on OSS page:
Again, I say that Steve Job's is far too an intelligent man to not understand OLPC's goals, so I can only imagine publicity (waaaaaaaaah! Google and Redhat are looking like nicer companies than Apple!) prompted his 'offer'.
So we could have had a $100--er, $140--MacBook.
Incorrect. You are not a c
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Actually, every time an article on this topic comes up there is a FLOOD of high-ranking comments similar to yours. And every time the response is the same. RTFM! At least try to follow the links, read the wiki, get up to speed before participating in the discussion. These machines are not going to be shipped to the poorest countries controlled by warlords. Brasil is not controlled by warlords and neither is Egypt and many other developing countries. People theier are not dying en masse of starvation. They have a large middle class and an underclass that can benifit from these laptops. The other fallacy is that ones government first have to solve every other problem before attempting to educate the population. I've been to real third world countries and kids their still enjoy playing football> watching tv and playing cheap consoles youv probably never heard of even if they dont have a nutricous meal three times a day. I'm absolutely sure they will immenesly enjoy playing and learning with these machines.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
On a silly note, additional "exposure" to sub-freezing temperatures, or oxygen deficient atmospheres, can easily prevent someone from learning much about them. It simply kills them.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Most of the Mac users I know use them exactly because they don't know, or want to know, what happens under the hood. Of course, there are Mac geeks, but proportionally few.