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First Look At Final OLPC Design
blackbearnh writes "At the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, AMD hosted a presentation of the final Industrial Prototype (Beta 1) of the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop. Linux Today has extensive reporting, including new photos and details about power consumption, networking, and the logistics of distributing and servicing what will be the largest rollout of any computing platform in history: 5 million units in the first year. This will represent nearly a 10% increase in the total worldwide laptop production for 2007."
Books are also very expensive. Even in mass production, a non-trivial book can cost around $20 each, and smaller run books are much more expensive due to (lack of) economy of scale.
Not to mention that large-scale distribution is not inexpensive, especially in the market areas for one of these laptops (poor infrastructure makes shipping more expensive). I imagine a government could actually save a good amount of money (if the laptops prove successful and long-lasting) by giving school children one of these laptops and then just having digital textbooks.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Remember that even if the electronic edition costs the same per child, the non-trivial costs of transportation will be removed from the equation.
If you take out some or part of the cost of printing, the deal becomes even sweeter.
This is a win-win situation - the price of the books go down because they don't need to be printed. This means more books are sold at a possibly higher profit margin. The books can get as large as needed because they are not on paper - encyclopedias can grow to unlimited size. The children have more books because the government can afford more and thus, I hope, the children get a better education and economy improves. And because they don't pollute when are made or transported, the environment wins.
Come on... It's an easy sell.
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