OLPC Manufacturer to Sell $200 Laptop On Open Market

srinravi writes "ArsTechnica reports that Quanta, the company manufacturing the XO laptops, has plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. 'According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC's XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.' While OLPC plans to sell the laptops in bulk to governments, which will then distribute the hardware to school children, the XO computer itself is not for sale on the open market. These XO-like commercial devices are still something of an unknown, but it has been announced they'll be using Open Source software."

Comments

They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[sethstorm]

For such a device, they sure are wanting to not release it - when that could be a good way to fund such devices. Is there some sort of problem with quality at that kind of mass amount?

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think what will happen when these dirt cheap laptops hit the market and the average non-business user finds out that it does everything he needs....for so much less. What will that do to the overpriced, virus infected win-laptop market?

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[siriuskase]

Marketing costs, distribution costs, etc.

While they may have figured out how to market and distribute to the governments that are their primary customers, they may not want to deal with the private market for some reason. Smaller purchase quantities comes to mind. But, you'd think they could hire someone else to market and distribute.

Like you suggest, it might be that the product wouldn't hold up too well under the scrutiny of knowledgeable customers in a competitive marketplace. The original product is intended for people who know nothing about compuerts and don't know anyone else who knows anything about computers.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same thing that Internet appliances did to the desktop market. 90% of all people use their PC for web and email. Yet internet appliances are so hated they all failed miserably.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Otter]

Nothing about this project makes any sense. They won't sell the hardware at a profit to raise funding or create economy of scale. They don't attempt to get the platform into the hands of developers who might be able to develop applications, instead of relying on giving compilers to children who have never seen a computer before. My suspicion is that they simply can't make them at the price/number points they keep claiming, but who knows?

By the way, if any of the MIT people involved with this project have an explanation, drop a message in one of my JE's and I'll be delighted to walk over and be set straight.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[CastrTroy]

They do have VMWare images you can run, although this isn't the same, as you wouldn't know how it runs on the actual hardware, I'm sure that it would help out quite a bit with developing applications.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[UbuntuDupe]

I actually think it would be a good idea just to make them cheap and sell to whoever wants one. It reminds me of this wealthy guy back in the 30's named Roger Enright. See, the government was going to build a housing project and rent out the rooms really cheap to the poor. Well, turned out, some nutjob blew up the place during construction so Enright swooped in and bought the land from the government and had the buildings re-constructed with this efficient design so he could also rent it out cheap. But unlike the government, he'd rent to anyone, not just the poor, and he did it at a profit. The irony is, Enright's buildings were truer to the design of the original architect of the housing project.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[uab21]

I don't know about the OLPC guys' deal with Quantas, but this raises some interesting questions. By making their stack open source, anyone can grab it - and now their hardware manufacturer is looking to sell a potentially functionally identical product. And there is no reason that the money from that product need go towards reducing OLPC costs rather than increasing Quantas' bankroll.

From this viewpoint it looks rather short sighted of them... but I hope that we just don't know all the facts.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[krasni_bor]

1) OLPC seems to have all the funds they need right now.
2) If the project works at all they will have huge economies of scale just selling to governments.
3) It is not difficult to get a development machine, if you get involved and write a little code FIRST (using an emulator, etc.).
4) Clearly, Quanta thinks they will be able to make them at scale and make even more than OLPC demands, based on this announcement.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[CastrTroy]

That's because they usually either come with a monthly service fee or cost as much as a real computer. Sell someone an internet appliance that's significantly cheaper than a computer, and doesn't have a monthly fee, and I think you'll be able to see quite a few units. I would love a laptop that only cost $200. That's cheaper than most PDAs you see on the market now.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[suggsjc]

Ahh, I've got mod points that I want to use, but I just...can't...stop...typing.

Anyway, first marketing costs? There are people practically begging to get these devices...and even willing to pay more than the "targeted" cost of ~$100. So, if there was ever a case of a product selling itself, then this is it.

Distribution costs are understandable. But at the same time, they have been saying that they won't take orders of less than a million (isn't that right?). So, it isn't necessarily a supply problem...that is if they could actually meet those demands. So couple that with the above paragraph and it seems like there would be at least one millionaire out there that would see this enormous opportunity to snap up a million or so of these and resell for a handsome profit.

All of this makes me casually raise an eyebrow. There are a couple of floating thoughts. First, maybe they feel like this is a *special* project and so only *special* (read: people in 3rd world countries) should get them. Second, (which the parent mentioned) is that maybe they aren't as high quality as us *non-special* (read: spoiled developed nation brats) would demand, and therefore wouldn't even sell in the first place. Third, (my own little thought) is that there are some interesting politics happening behind closed doors.

To the first, I say "get off your high horse" sell them at a markup and re-invest your profits in something you deem worthwhile.
To the second, I say "don't knock it till you (or some other schmuck) tries it". There is practically no potential for loss here. If somebody wants to purchase 1 million units, take their money and run...after you give them the laptops that is.
To the third I say, well actually I have nothing to say since I have no idea is this is the case or what is being said behind those closed doors.

I hope this project succeeds just as much as the next (excluding Dell, HP, Intel, etc shareholders) person. But let's not count any chickens (or laptops) before they hatch.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[bfields]

For such a device, they sure are wanting to not release it - when that could be a good way to fund such devices.

Maybe, maybe not. I imagine a lot of geeks are in the same boat as me--I listen to the neat stuff they're doing with it, look at the pictures, and say "OMG it's adorable! I MUST HAVE one!" But when it came time to actually plop down my $200 (or whatever) I might take a closer look at the specs, listen to what other users had to say about it, and say: ya know, this doesn't really make sense for me.

So I wonder if a project so targetted at a particular audience would really be as succesfull with the geek market as the Slashdot comments would suggest.

And then there's all the trouble of distributing the thing, and heck, it isn't even done yet, is it? Aren't they still just working with the first sample units and gearing up pilots and stuff?

Well, it'll be interesting to watch what happens in any case.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Singletoned]

For such a device, they sure are wanting to not release it - when that could be a good way to fund such devices. Is there some sort of problem with quality at that kind of mass amount?

No, the problem is the black market. If you send a few thousand laptops to a poor government, they may choose to sell them rather than give them to children. If the laptop is not on public sale, this will be fairly obvious. However if the laptop is generally available, it will be harder to tell whether the laptop has been bought from government stock or not

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Em Adespoton]

I've got another theory...

The OLPC laptops contain a bunch of hardware invented specifically for them, correct?

Countries have standards bodies like the FCC and others that regulate a LOT about how such devices can perform. My guess is that the OLPC wouldn't pass all these tests. Sell to governments only, and you don't have to worry about this, as the standards bodies are a part of the group doing the purchasing. Selling on the open market is another story.

The $200 devices probably use standard parts wherever possible, as these parts have already been approved by the various regulatory bodies.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[burns210]

OLPC does not want to sell the XO to the general public for a couple reasons:

1. 10 million customers takes a lot more work, and a lot more time, than 10 customers (that buying in quanities of >= 1million).
2. Selling to governments in bulk gets the laptops to a *lot* of kids fast. This is the goal, one laptop per child.
3. They have *always* said they would have a general consumer version produced (this announcement)
4. The UPS truck mentality. If the XO is *ONLY* given to children, then whenever you see it (either in Lybia or NYC), it better be in the hands of a child. No one steals UPS/USPS trucks, because they have a very specific and singular purpose and are easily recognized. Any XO-like machine that is sold to an adult (or the general consumer) must be visually different than the XO to be able to build this stigma.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[adisakp]

I actually held one in my hands GDC earlier this month and talked to some people working on it. They're trying to get people to write games for kids on the machine.

Apparently, the units they have (at least the dev units) are not approved for general manufacture because their radiation emissions. This is pretty common for dev units. Being in the game industry I have to wonder how much radiation I've been exposed to from beta dev kits (especially one that I currently have that weighs about 70 lbs and sounds like a tornado when I turn it on).

The laptop, when booted up, goes thru the standard linux boot... starting devices and printing the familiar text. It took almost 3 minutes to boot. Considering if you pull the recharger 10 minutes to get 5 minutes of play out of it and 3 are spent on your boot, you're going to be very disappointed. Now they hope to get around by having good sleep support (suspend to non-volatile memory / flash) so you don't have to go through that boot often but lets just say that kids with the AC adapter will be much happier than the ones who have to power it themselves.

There's still A LOT of work for them to have this device ready for the masses but it did look like an interesting project and certainly the idea behind it is noble.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyway, first marketing costs? There are people practically begging to get these devices...and even willing to pay more than the "targeted" cost of ~$100."

Let's be honest here. It's probably only a few thousand geeks who are doing the begging, and not all of those translate to sales. For instance, I really wanted a Wii before they came out but now the system has been reviewed and the shortcomings made clear I've put it on the back burner and found better uses for my cash. So, without marketing they'll get a couple of thousand sales. This isn't worth the effort for a project that's intended to work in blocks of millions of units.

As I'm commenting I might as well add this. $200 laptops are not special. It's what I paid for mine second hand, and mine came with Windows (so I can dual boot for playing games/using obscure Windows only software and hardware) and I believe mine has a better screen and 3D card too. Competing against a glut of second hand laptops available on the cheap and perfectly suitable for personal use would be a stupid business strategy.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Rogerborg]

Why would they need to? They sell a million units at $100 to Elbonia, and Elbonia sells 500,000 of them on to us decadent imperialist pigdogs for $200 a unit. OLPC break even and only have to deal with one customer, Elbonia get their 500,000 units for free, we get it for the same price either way. We seem to be vastly underestimating 3rd world countries' ability to leverage a good deal.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[himself]

suggsjc wote:
>
> There are people practically begging to get these devices...and even willing to pay more than the "targeted" cost of ~$100. So, if
> there was ever a case of a product selling itself, then this is it.
>
      "Developers! Developers! Developers!"

      Or, more to the point, "selling itself" to whom? The "home" market will be smaller since the machine probably can't run, say Office XP or World of Warcraft, and people like "us" just aren't a large enough group to care about. *shrug* Like the rumbling that comes from crowds hustling to buy laptops with Linux pre-installed. (What, don't you hear it?)

      Other than that, I agree that it would be stoopid of them not to add some more production capacity and make some profit, but maybe they'd prefer the stability of .gov pre-orders and the peace & quiet of not having to maintain a "One Geek Squad Per Child" desk?

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[suggsjc]

Ok, I'll bite on at least the off-topic wii rant. I am a proud wii owner, and I play with my wii daily (haha, like you haven't heard THAT one before). But seriously, you mean to tell me that you can in the same post admit to buying a sub $200 laptop and also think the wii has shortcomings. Because the only shortcoming that I have found (and it really isn't even a big one) is the graphics. So that nullifies your opinion on graphics since the wii will probably perform better than your cheapo laptop.

Your may have a point about the few thousand geeks thing. But at the same time, it might be easier to get a few average joe's to drop $200 to "just do email and surf" instead of the $400+ for a new dell. Also, I was advocating that someone else purchase the million units and resell, so it would still be operating in the "blocks of millions of units" category.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't attempt to get the platform into the hands of developers who might be able to develop applications, instead of relying on giving compilers to children who have never seen a computer before.

Incorrect. If you are a developer who wants to contribute, and your project requires access to the hardware, you can apply for a laptop. I don't know the details, but it sounds like they provide the laptops for free and request that you send it back when you are done with it. (...which is all a volunteer developer truly needs. I expect most people who say they want to contribute really just want to own a laptop, in which case this offer would be disappointing.)

There are also numerous projects underway to make it easier to develop for the laptop without actually owning one. You can download emulation images. And you can try installing a Sugar development environment if you have a Un*x machine. But this is a little tricky, so several people have put together LiveCDs of the development environment already set up.

And there are no plans to include a C compiler on the final laptops, as they are cramped for space. The only development environments currently planned are based on Python and Smalltalk.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Deliveranc3]

My you sure covered all your bases there, well for a conservative.

Doesn't all the talk of companies losing their focus register with you? These people are passionate about educating children in developing nations (3rd world is a conservative or American term not used in most of the Civilized world).

Since we see companies losing focus every day you'd be right in thinking that there exists no possible solution, except these guys seem to have found one.

Now capitalists are stepping in and saying "Just sell a few, you'll be hands off" but they'll be back distracting open source developers and the company doing the work with "easy" solutions to "consumers" problems.

Additionally from the perspective of a third world government a non-profit is trying to help and brilliant minds may actually be involved, as soon as it becomes capitalistic it's just another American quick fix, which translated to Non-American means quick sale.

That's just how the world see's American, you and the 5 people who modded you up thinking you'd actually examined the issue are the problem, deal with it.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[rtechie]

It's almost certainly a support issue. At the price these are selling, they can't afford to do ANYTHING for support, especially if they're running linux. And they can't take any sort of returns either (costs too much). This makes it tough to sell in the USA because you can't sell new PCs "as is" with no returns. With bulk purchase from governments (governments can waive consumer protection laws) they can get around these issues.

I don't think we'll see these at retail. Look on EBay once they become available.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[suggsjc]

Call me short-sighted, a capitalistic pig, or...an American I don't care. But pretty much the bottom line is that things must make money (or at least not lose money) in order to keep doing whatever it is that they are doing. That is unless this venture will receive funding from outside sources that do not expect any return on their investment, and that very well could be the case here...and if so, then sorry for sounding "American."

I don't see any difference between "consumer" problems and the ones that they are going to be faced with from their other (intended) users, unless those people are just going to be SOOO happy that they don't want bugs fixed, etc.

So to you, Mr whoever, that thinks that Americans are the root of all evil. Don't take our money when we try to give it to you, or at least ideas of how to take it. And don't complain when these people that DO get the computers end up giving us theirs when we offer services in exchange for what's the word I'm looking for....money, thats it.

Money DOES make the world go round. Its a (possibly) sad truth, but truth nonetheless. You can dream up your socialist ideals all you want, but stop complaining to us when our models (capitalism) work, "deal with it".

As the great philosopher Jack Handy once said:

Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[couchslug]

It should not be crippled either, or it will end up among the Ipaq-tastic curiosities on the I-Appliance BBS:

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/Ult raBoard.pl?Session=

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[siriuskase]

The land was already "assembled" and zoned for inexpensive housing. that's a big project in itself. Normally, higher priced housing is more profitable to build and much easier to get approved since most communities don't want to invite poor people into their communities. And even if it was easy to get the zoning, the markup is greater on expensive housing, assuming there are buyers.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[UbuntuDupe]

Heh, I can see that, and agree, to my detriment. Basically, I don't mind living in cheap aparments.

I *do* mind living with people who can only afford a cheap apartment. :-/

Btw, that anecdote was from a novel, not reality. :-P

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[hurfy]

After a quick ebay scan i'll have agree. There appears to be 1000+ laptops well under $200 including 1Ghz with windows and wifi.

Unless they sell the cheesy one with the pull-thingie as a novelty it doesn't seem like competing against Ebay on one end and Dell on the other would be too easy.

My last laptop cost $25...hehe 486 i needed for a database project.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[blitziod]

no cuz for 200 bucks many people would purchase them for young children here in the USA. Kids that are 9 -14 may not need a better lap top( or be trusted with one) and also many parents can afford 200 but not 1400

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Deliveranc3]

I don't think they should sell it to the public, but I've had my hands on one and at any price it is a very slick peice of kit.

It feels like an apple project, things are so well designed.

Everything is very slick and simple, processing power wasn't an issue with any of the applications I ran (And I did try to pain test the unit, running everything I could think of).

These would overturn the laptop market, but for them it's probably easier for linux developers to run the images, work through their own laptop and submit code. Why would they want to ship to thousands of people who already have laptops.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[hughk]

Apparently, the units they have (at least the dev units) are not approved for general manufacture because their radiation emissions. This is pretty common for dev units.

I think you will find they are talking about electromagnetic interference and lack of FCC certification. Not much problem unless someone is trying to use a radio nearby. Getting something through FCC certification is not lightly to be undertaken and definitely not until the hardware design is 100% stable.

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[Hadlock]

Did webTV come with a subscription?

Re:They are very insistent on NOT releasing it?

[BobPaul]

Nothing. They're slow and don't do everything you need. Have you actually looked at the specs or seen the UI video? This will be a good device for school children who are new to computers, but I don't think most consumers would be too interested in this.

Which is probably why they don't open it up to the general market. That would open them to dealing with distribution cost, marketing, support, etc. That's not saying I wouldn't but one, but I also don't expect it to replace anything I currently own.

I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[Lumpy]

Mine come WITHOUT the hacking locks they have in place. I will want to replace their OS with something that is my own and the current iteration does not allow that.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[Maximum Prophet]

Well, yeah, I imagine, that would make the thing sell much better. A sub $200 laptop would be an excellent process control computer for simple things like temperature control, CNC, weather monitoring, etc. Having a standard, plug and play platform would be very useful. Even single board computers without monitors or power supplies can cost much more than $200.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[Hijacked Public]

You can get all sorts of old PLC hardware on Ebay for less than $200, for process control applications. I bought an entire Allen Bradley PLC5 setup, processor, a dozen IO cards analog and digital, power supply, chassis, all that, for $40 shipped to my house. Of course, having a copy of Logix 5 makes that viable but there are other controllers out there that work with freely available programming tools.

Someone industrious enough to cobble their own process control setup probably knows this, but who knows.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[burns210]

You would be able to do that with this laptop, and the OLPC laptop. The "hacking locks" they put in place are meant to be disabled by the user if they want. They just want you to be smart enough to realize what you are doing when you say "no thanks, I'll take care of security myself."

I imagine many version of the OS will come up and this will be perfectly easy to do, even as a child receiving this machine. Choice, of course, is a good thing. There is a project to put Minix 3 on it, and Plan9 had a Google Summer of Code idea to put their OS on it, which would be pretty awesome. Not to mention Windows is said to be released for it (a Window mobile/ce-based version). I've even heard mumblings about putting a Gentoo-based 'core' in place of Fedora, but leave all the userland software in place.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[GreatBunzinni]

Screw that. A sub $200 laptop would be excellent. Period. I've bought a 1300 laptop a couple of years ago and and about 90% of the work I do with it is simply text editing, access email, jabber IM and browse the web, stuff that I can do very well with any used sub-100 PC from eBay (which I'm actually using at the moment). On the other hand, you can't even buy a used laptop in working order for less than 250. Not even the sub 800MHz oldies.

I, for one, would easily pay 200 for a laptop that could handle that type of work. It doesn't need to run half life or be "vista-ready". It just needs to have a wireless internet connection, have a decent battery life and handle basic work without any problem. I would be very happy if someone picked up the 100$ laptop, dropped the cheesy design in favor of something more sensible (thinkpad-ish?), sticked any random off-the-web linux distribution on it (*cof* Kubuntu *cof*) and sold it. Very happy.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[Anonymous Coward]

call me when you get that AB stuff to pull the weather from rssweather.com and make decisions based on that.

Re:I'll buy two with ONE requirement.

[Da w00t]

Um, if you had actually researched a little bit on the XO laptop, you'd have found out:

All the security features of the XO laptop, BitFrost, etc can be disabled by the user.

Every. Last. One.

Next time please research the subject before you start posting.

Should sell well

[Maximum Prophet]

People still use and support the Tandy Model 100 http://www.club100.org/. AFAIR, it cost more than $200 when it was new, adjusting for inflation.

Re:Should sell well

[Lumpy]

In fact Tandy 100 and 102's still go for a premium. I recently sold both my 102's for well over $100.00 each. way more than I expected.

Re:Should sell well

[siriuskase]

My friend in college in the early 80's had a 100. He used it for taking notes in class. I still covet that machine. Does anyone nowadays make a small computer with a decent sized keyboard and without a big flippy screen? It seems you can get a small screen with a small keyboard (PDA, smartphone) or a big keyboard with a big screen, laptop, but if you want to only glance occassionaly at a few lines of notes as you are touchtyping them, you gotta use a PDA with some sort of addon keyboard.

Re:Should sell well

[Random Destruction]

I use a pocket pc with a fold out IR keyboard for this. Works well for the few classes in which I can type notes. Sadly its pretty useless for math classes.

Re:Should sell well

[filesiteguy]

Wow, that's interesting news. I picked one up at a garage sale a few years back for $1. I plugged it in once to a TV, wrote some funky BASIC code to print my name all over the screen and haven't taken it out of the box since.

Maybe I should revisit.

In any case, I would actually LOVE one of these OLPC machines for my kids. They're always playing on my laptop: http://www.perfectreign.com/?q=node/51

Re:Should sell well

[Maximum Prophet]

That, and just about all laptops nowdays have the trackpad between your hands and the keys. I don't like it, but a friend of mine absolutely detests it, but recently was completely unable to buy any brand of high end laptop with the keyboard near the bottom edge.

Re:Should sell well

[OECD]

Does anyone nowadays make a small computer with a decent sized keyboard and without a big flippy screen?

Take a look at AlphaSmart's portable computers. The Neo goes for $250 and is roughly equivalent to a Model 100.

Re:Should sell well

[linhux]

Ah! You finally gave me a reason to dig that old toy out from the closet of abandoned gadgets. My grandfather, who was a journalist, used it in the 80's, and since I was the family computer geek, I hung on to it when he passed away. In 4th and 5th grade I could nerd away coding games in BASIC during the lunch breaks. Since then, once every five years or so, I've plugged it in and booted it up just to see if it works. And this time, too, it booted! It runs on 6 AA batteries for quite a while, as far as I recall. Now I'll just have to find a serial cable and see if I can transfer stuff between it and my Mac or PC. Unfortunately the storage on the T200 is battery-backed RAM, so all my old BASIC programs are long gone since it's been without battery for many years.

Here's how it looks: http://flickr.com/photos/pajp/439822054/ - quite a beauty, eh?

Thanks for getting me to play with it again! :-)

Re:Should sell well

[PitaBred]

Many laptops have a disabling button you can use, or you can just disable the device completely (don't load the drivers). Did that stop your friend from buying a machine?

Re:Should sell well

[spudnic]

I have a Tandy WP-2 word processor sitting right next to me. I use it for taking notes at meetings, etc. Light, simple, and runs on AA batteries.

Now if I could only figure out how to get vim on there.

Re:Should sell well

[Maximum Prophet]

It's not the trackpad per se, it's the extra distance. Look at a real keyboard. The keys start about 2cm from the edge. That's the way laptops used to be. Now, all the machines with decent specs, have these trackpads and extra distance. But you're right, he could glue a piece of wood or plastic that was just the right thickness over the trackpad to make it go away. (and disable it in software)

Still modern laptop keyboard are compromises. The beauty of the Model 100 keyboard was that it had full sized keys with travel. People like journalists loved them.

Re:Should sell well

[zippthorne]

They used to sell email appliances a couple years ago that were basically 3-5 lines of LCD smacked onto a standard keyboard. They ran for a month off a pair of AA-batteries, and connected to email servers via phone modem. Since they only handled text, the low bandwidth didn't really matter.

It was kind of the evolution of the keyboard w/ memory, where you used to be able to store keystrokes in a keyboard and transmit them to the computer later when you hooked it up. Unfortunately, I can't remember what they're called, but they were so useful, I can't imagine they're not sold anymore. I would think they'd have wifi for no good reason by now.

Criminy. A cursory web search reveals only http://www.landel.com/ which is similar to what I remember being sold at office max only a couple of years ago. But a bit on the expensive side for what it's supposed to do. I can't even find the right search terms.

Re:Should sell well

[siriuskase]

Uses Palm OS, too, how cool. Guis have sort of forced large screens and track pads onto any laptop that wants to be taken seriously, but this thing that processes text, numbers, and minimal graphics can be useful, especially for people who create text and don't just read and look at pretty pictures. Do you have any idea how popular it is?

Re:Should sell well

[OECD]

Do you have any idea how popular it is?

Mildly popular. They've been around for a long time, so their business model must be sound. They aim a lot of marketing towards K-12 education, which makes sense given the cost and durability of their products.

Re:Should sell well

[mrchaotica]

Sadly its pretty useless for math classes.

For all my math/engineering classes, I bit the bullet and got a Tablet PC. It's really great for writing equations and drawing diagrams. Of course, my situation is a bit different because I also needed something viable for programming and general-purpose use (and thus decided against buying and hacking one of these instead), but it still works out well.

The only downside is that there's really no viable tablet software for Linux or Mac OS*, so I'm stuck with Windows for the foreseeable future. I think I'll be a lot happier when KDE/Windows comes out...

(*My laptop should be capable of running OS X, albeit in violation of the EULA. The support for the Wacom serial tablet is the only remaining concern about that.)

Cost of distribution and sales

[PIPBoy3000]

I think part of the reason the $200 laptop costs $200 is that they're selling them in bulk to governments. It's then up to the government to distribute it appropriately. If you're doing it yourself, you've got to pay for the distribution infrastructure yourself, which gets tacked on to the cost of the $200 laptop. Now, these days with Amazon and Dell, you can do pretty good at minimizing these costs, but it'll still make it more expensive.

If that ends up bringing the cost of the laptop into the $300-$400 range, you're suddenly competing with the likes of Dell and other low-cost laptop manufacturers.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[UbuntuDupe]

What about having one of those auctions like they did on the defunct Mercata.com, where the more people join, the lower the price goes?

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[An Onerous Coward]

Why are you calling it "the $200 laptop?" The OLPC project has always had a target of $100/laptop. If you're using the phrase to refer to the OLPC's laptops, you're wrong. If you're using it simply to refer to $200 laptops in general, then you're being tautological. A $200 laptop is a $200 laptop because it's a laptop that is selling for $200.

Read the article. Or the summary at the very least. The manufacturer tasked with building the laptops for the OLPC project has simply decided that it can use its experience to offer a very similar piece of hardware to the public at a low price. It's not the OLPC laptop, and it's not the much hoped for "buy one for $200 and a kid in Rwanda gets one free" deal that's been suggested. There's no reason to think that these laptops will be sold in bulk to governments.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[Adhemar]

I think part of the reason the $200 laptop costs $200 is that they're selling them in bulk to governments. (...) If that ends up bringing the cost of the laptop into the $300-$400 range, you're suddenly competing with the likes of Dell and other low-cost laptop manufacturers.

If I read the article correctly, US$200 is the price Quanta is planning to sell this XO-like device for to individuals. (I am wondering if a portion of the price goes directly to the OLPC project. Since the article does not mention it, I am inclined to think this is not the case.)

If I remember correctly from the OLPC talk at FOSDEM, the pricing of the OLPC project's actual XO (in bulk, to governments) is currently expected to start at around US$135-140 when production begins this year, which was slightly over the target. The goal is to reach the US$100 mark in 2008, which is why the XO is/was also known as "the $100 Laptop". Quite an impressive price, given the hardware specifications, in my opinion.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[nbritton]

Well even if it's $260 bucks, which comes out to 20% markup + $20 shipping per unit, I'd still be willing to buy lots of them... for embedded tasks. The cheap Dell notebook I could find is $500.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[imlepid]

My biggest problem with the OLPC project is their (apparent) target. I keep hearing about providing $100 laptops for poor children in Africa and I think that is the incorrect target as most poor children in the wilds of Africa stay in school for (probably) 8 yrs and then go work on the farm or someother non-highly technical area. (I have no data to back this up, I'm only talking from what I perceive.)

A far better target would be those children in semi-"developed" countries where the extra technical skils of knowing how to operate a laptop would greatly increase their human capital vis-à-vis the "developed" nations. To even prvide them to countries like France (where I have lived) would be a boon to the children. The level of exposure of the typical French student to computers is surprising considering how much computer skills are valued, although in France the last few years has seen a great rise in the exposure of the pupils to technology.

I think a $100 laptop would be of largest value to those in the semi-developed (say, Brazil, Ukraine, and South Africa) as many of these countries are getting to the point where their workers are starting to compete for jobs with western workers. Also, the introduction of these low-cost computers in countries were there is little exposure to technology would also be advantageous. (I can think of areas in the US where they could be put to good use, and if I'm correct (i.e. according to wikipedia) there are schools in Massachusetts and Maine are looking to deploy them.)

The OLPC computers should go to those students who are going to be needing technical skills in the work place, not those who will be working in the african savannah after only a few years of basic shcooling.

As for making a OLPCs or OLPC-like computer available to the general public, I think it would be a great idea. (Hey, I would love to have one.) I also think that the price should be elevated to off-set the cost to the true target audence (that is education departments in various nations/states). Care must be taken, however, to not elevate that price too much as I could easily see (if demand were high enough) a crooked national government buying a lot of laptops at the "government" price and simply reselling them to rich westerners. For example, if the sovereign government price was $100 and the price for individuals was $200, then what's to stop Nigera's government from buying $100 laptops and reselling them. Maybe, a $25 price over the 1M-unit bulk price would be low enough to discourage resale. It all depends upon demand. Additionally, keeping the price difference as a seperate charge, and a charge which is directly paid to a non-profit would, I think, encourage people to accept a higher price as they can have a tax-deduction to justify it.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[Skreems]

The point of the OLPC project isn't just to train children to enter a technical workforce. It's to bring the benefits of digital technology to underdeveloped nations, presumably in the hopes that it will push a generation to learn and advance faster than they could otherwise.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[phaggood]

> I keep hearing about providing $100 laptops for poor children in Africa and I think that is the incorrect target as most poor children in the wilds of Africa

I'm guessing the 6,000 or so remaining forest people currently living in the 'wilds' probably aren't filling out applications to get laptops; however that leaves a gross market of over 900M other folk (excluding 1-2M refugees - and I mean the mobile ones in tents not the ones who've immigrated/assimilated into other countries) of which some significant population exists between *forest people* and wealthy urban residents w/ fairly constant electrical power (i.e. like Michigan outside of storm season).

And per another thread; like coffee growers in South America, anyone who deals in commodities (i.e. goat farmers) would be VERY well served by having timely market information.

Re:Cost of distribution and sales

[AK Marc]

I keep hearing about providing $100 laptops for poor children in Africa

If you stop listening to fools, you will no longer be uninformed. No one is planning on selling laptops to kids that have no food and no school. The target is places with all the basic needs met, but not a solid public education infrastructure. Places like Mexico and countries in South America and Asia would be the targets, but not Somalia. The places with constant government changes and corruption will not be likely to buy them, and the people with no basic infrastructure will be unable to use them appropriately. They would do well to be placed in the USA and western Europe, but I think that the governemnts of the more industrialized countries will probably see these as too 3rd world and not want to join in, but I can hope I'm wrong.

Yes ...

[blowdart]

But will it run Vista?

*snicker*

Here's an idea

[hedwards]

How about they just sell the laptops on the open market and forget about sending them to developing nations. Of course they won't because a child without food or clean drinking water really gets a huge benefit out of a laptop or the support infrastructure to support it.

People forget just how cheap it is to prevent water borne illnesses in comparison to other problems. If these people promoting this project have any decency, they will use the laptops to brink food and water to the people. Yes, eventually they will probably need net access, but all the internets in the world aren't going to feed somebody that is starving.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal of the OLPC project is education. These computers will make the world of information available to those who would otherwise have been limited to their indigent backgrounds. Cleaning their water for them is great, cleaning their water for them and teaching them how to clean their own water is even better. You're not going to make any real progress in the third world until it has been saturated by education.

Re:Here's an idea

[siriuskase]

all the internets in the world aren't going to feed somebody that is starving. Forget about sending them pron and email. Think of all the food and water we could shove through those pipes.

Re:Here's an idea

[Speare]

Of course they won't because a child without food or clean drinking water really gets a huge benefit out of a laptop or the support infrastructure to support it.

I know it might blow your mind, but there really are a lot of kids who live in areas that are somewhere BETWEEN the relative wealth levels of "must buy an iPod for my dog" and "must steal more cardboard for the roof". The XO isn't going to help a kid who can't lift her malnourished bones off the hardscrabble. The XO is going to help a kid who would have to travel 10mi to the nearest well-stocked library.

The cellphone has become a major boon for farmers in several countries-- they can call ahead and negotiate their crop's value before spending the resources to haul perishable product to an uninterested market. The XO may have other "game changing" advantages. It will only have the chance to make a difference if the rich people quit naysaying every last little nit based on their own shortsightedness.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is not really a black and white place, you know. There are people who need food more than anyone else. There are people who don't need any help from anyone. But there are also people that are not too poor to die hungry but too poor to have any decent chance at getting good education. If you can bother about trying to make the world a better place by feeding the hungry, don't just let it end there. Once a portion of the hungry has some bread, they could really use cheap access to educational opportunities like this.

Of course you could argue about whether or not the cheap laptop is an educational tool worth the investment, but you didn't seem to concentrate on that. Did you?

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your valuable FUD. Here's further reading.

Re:Here's an idea

[Peter Trepan]

The XO is going to help a kid who would have to travel 10mi to the nearest well-stocked library.

In the rural U.S. community where I grew up, it was in fact 10 miles to the nearest well-stocked library.

Re:Here's an idea

[hedwards]

Perhaps, but this whole thing is a waste of time as long as there isn't the infrastructure to keep the water clean.

Laptops for the children really don't contribute to that goal. There are steps that need to be taken and for this project to skip the ones involving sanitation and food is really just a way of western countries giving themselves something to pat themselves on the back with rather than actually accomplish something.

It isn't the lack of education that is the problem. People that live in an area without the resources to have food and clean water are going to be in trouble whether they are educated or not. Pretending like we can just skip to an educated population in any part of the world without first establishing some sort of sane supply for the basic essentials is fanatasy world stuff.

With the demand the way it is for these laptops here, there is a good chance that the proceeds made from selling them could go a long way to providing the training and access to things like food and water which are much more important. Laptops are not necessary for providing the sort of training to deal with those types of issues. Many parts of the world have gotten along quite fine without them. Even if books and writing supplies are too expensive for things like sanitizing water one can teach that orally if need be.

Re:Here's an idea

[hedwards]

Just out of curiosity, why should I focus on that? Am I really so ignorant that the millions of people that die from things like malaria, dysentery, cholera and starvation are a figment of my imagination?

Of those things, both dysentery and cholera are killers as well as having a straightforward method for preventing people from getting them in the first place.

A laptop isn't a necessary device for learning. Yes, it can be used for that, but the cost is quite a bit higher than just the cost of the device, getting the support staff and somehow getting the lesson plans on it takes money. As it turns out quite a bit of money.

Considering the amount of information that can be taught orally about how to deal with the aforementioned killers, it seems really disingenuous to focus attention to a problem which can't be solved without fixing the lower level problems. There is a reason why societies typically focus on getting food/water and shelter before focusing on education that isn't directly related to that.

People like the OLPC because it is kind of feel good. It allows one to feel like one is making a difference without actually solving the largest problems. We often times feel obliged to provide treatment to people in the third world with HIV without really thinking about the cost relative to the much more urgent need for treating other things.

So, seriously, could you really explain why selling a significant number in the developed world to fund projects that make a difference is such a bad thing?

Re:Here's an idea

[Russ Nelson]

Of course they won't because a child without food or clean drinking water really gets a huge benefit out of a laptop

The government is already buying books for these kids, to the tune of about $20/year. Or not, in which case you can be sure they're NOT going to buy laptops. But if they are, then they convert the textbook into an ebook. Use of the laptop as an ebook pays for itself ... and then there's everything else you *might* do with it. Even if the teachers don't incorporate it into the curriculum, it's still worth doing.

Or are you suggesting that governments shouldn't provide a free education for their children? That's an idea worthy of consideration, but I suspect it's one you disagree with.

Re:Here's an idea

[Lord Lemur]

Would you have benifited from the internet?

Re:Here's an idea

[rbanffy]

I can't quite understand why people insist in the misconception that these computers are for those who face terminal misery.

These computers are not for starving children. We have to reach those by other means. What they aim is to provide better education for less (printing and shipping good books is very expensive) so that more money can be used in some other projects like bringing food and water to populations in need, with the added bonus of a better educated population for what amounts to essentially no additional money spent.

I live in a third world country and I would have to drive (with my carbon-neutral ethanol-running car) about five hundred kilometers to be face to face with someone who has no access to food, water, basic healthcare or a decent social security network. And, even in the poorest parts of the country, most of those really do have access to these basic services, but nobody ever told them how to get them.

We have to deal with the most basic human problems with other tools. These computers are the tools governments will use to create the other tools, whatever shape they happen to take.

Re:Here's an idea

[Hufo]

FYI, here is a very interesting video about misconceptions about the "third world": Myths about the developing world

Re:Here's an idea

[rbanffy]

I think the US should really consider employing the XO in education.

The US population is very sparsely distributed. I am quite sure education in rural areas is not up to the same standards as in urban areas. This technology is cheap enough to be able to help and be barely detectable in the overall expenditures.

Besides that, the US alone could create the critical mass for this project to be successful

Re:Here's an idea

[PitaBred]

We give them prophylactics, tell them how it's spread, and they insist on believing in witchcraft. I don't mind helping people, but I hate helping ingrates.

Re:Here's an idea

[ThinkingInBinary]

Just out of curiosity, why should I focus on that? Am I really so ignorant that the millions of people that die from things like malaria, dysentery, cholera and starvation are a figment of my imagination?

Nobody said you had to focus on it. But if a bunch of people who know how to design laptops and write software decide that they are going to help this group of people by doing just that, who are you to criticize them and say "But there are worse problems you should be solving!"? They're trying to be helpful, and you're complaining. Besides, there are plenty of charity groups trying to work on more basic issues like food, water, hygiene, and decent jobs. There's no reason we can't attack multiple problems at once.

Re:Here's an idea

[bhsx]

Maybe you should read every single one of the OLPC discussions here on /..
You know, the one's where some asshat spews-off about how food is what will help the starving. You're right! Food will help the starving, as well as clean water will help those without. However, if you HAD actually read any of those discussions you would see your argument brought-up and destroyed every single time. These are not for children/communities where fresh water is a problem. The OLPC is designed for people who are beyond that problem and are facing educational issues, NOT starving.

Re:Here's an idea

[feranick]

You have really no clue of what are the modern education requirements. Oral lecturing is good, but per se it's definitively not enough. You need literature (in the broader sense), material teachers can use to make their case. An example: you are teaching about malaria. How are you going to describe the processes of infection to the kids without books, and any resource? Yes, because libraries and books in developing countries are very expensive to maintain, and to keep updated. That's where the OLPC comes in, as an easy access to a universal encyclopedia which is the Internet, always updated and ready to go. Lower level problems need to be handled, but education is among them. Think the AIDS epidemic in Africa, education is the key to lower the infection rates. OLPC is trying to fill partly the gap. Nobody forced the goverments of such countries to join the program. So unless you have a better plan to reduce those lower level needs, shut up.

Re:Here's an idea

[feranick]

So true. Unfortunately lots of people are complaining based on their ignorance. They think everybody in a developing country is a starving dry country. Bad education, not there but in the developed countries. It'd be about time schools in developed countries should start making distinctions as you did. Otherwise we will keep hearing these folks denigrating a potentially great project based on their total ignorance (and proud of it).

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not bode well if the education in rural areas is not UP TO the standards of urban areas..... the educational systems in most of our urban areas is nothing to brag about

Re:Here's an idea

[Peter Trepan]

Would you have benifited from the internet?

I work full-time as a web designer - something I learned how to do on the internet. In fact, when I went to college, there were no classes on web design. When I hear about some new thing, I look it up on Wikipedia. I'm reading MIT's free online computer science textbook right now. I read Neuromancer, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect online. I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for the first time at the Gutenberg Project site.

So yeah, absolutely. Not only would I have benefitted from it as a kid, I benefit from it now.

They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[gelfling]

Yes I understand only goat farmers in Kenya are entitled to cheap usable hardware whereas poor people in the US are not. Moreover, middle class people in the US should be grateful at having to spend $2000 for a VistaBloat machine because, well that's the White Man's Burden.

What I don't understand is how they think this is going to get manufacturing efficiencies in volume working for them? I mean, couldn't they swallow their liberal guilt a little bit and at least charge Bwana $300? I think we'd be willing to do that. Because let's face reality here. I know of no school in the US that's going to gut their Windows infrastructure for these, no matter what they say about selling these units to governments to 'give' to schools.

Otherwise I guess we can go out and buy a bunch of old used laptops for $200-400 each and put Ubuntu on them and tell OLPC to got jump in the lake. At least here in the US where we don't have to worry about electricity and whatnot.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Lumpy]

Moreover, middle class people in the US should be grateful at having to spend $2000 for a VistaBloat machine because, well that's the White Man's Burden.

if you spend that much on a windows laptop then you sir are a foaming at the mouth moron. I bought a vista machine (and erased the OS as soon as I got it) for $699 this is a Dual core speed demon that plays doom3 nicely. I got it from a secret online store..... Dell.com

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[jabuzz]

That is still $500 more expensive that a $200 computer. My four and half year old neice does not need to play Doom 3, but a $200 style XO machine would be fanstastic for her, especially in pink. Also the battery life on a XO is much better than on your Dell. Twelve years ago I spend nearly $5000 for a Pentium 75 laptop with 16MB of RAM, 810MB of harddisk and a 640x480 screen. An XO has a 433MHz processor 256MB of RAM, 1GB of flash instead of a hard disk, wireless networking and a 800x600 screen. I'll have one.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[jamiethehutt]

Otherwise I guess we can go out and buy a bunch of old used laptops for $200-400 each and put Ubuntu on them and tell OLPC to got jump in the lake.

I want a OLPC. An old laptop will not be as compact, will not be as robust, will not have as much battery life, will not have a nippy solid state disk and will not have nearly as good a screen for reading on. The old laptop probably wont have wireless and probably wont have excellent linux support, in fact it's likely to have some compatibility problems. Also I think the OLPC, or at least the green one, looks pretty funky...

It's a pretty clear choice for me.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[morgan_greywolf]

The difference here is that the poor people in the U.S. (defined as any household below the official poverty line (~$25K/year)) are rich and highly-educated compared to the poor goat farmers in Kenya.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[balor]

I suspect if you form some sort of buying co-op or convince your state government to buy a large number the OLPC will deal with you. As has been stated, time and again, the reason for not dealing one-to-one with individuals as buyers is a cost thing. Distributing to you and me will cost money. Distributing in bulk to governments is cheap.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[mnmn]

They're not called goat farmers, they're called Shepherds.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[AlHunt]

>in the US where we don't have to worry about electricity and whatnot.

I'm not so sure. Frankly, this has been on my mind lately. The power grid has already shown it's fragility. The US congress has become the poster child for "America is unwilling to see a fight through to the end". Every time I see Murtha tearing up in the well of the House or Pelosi doing her Cartman ("Respect my authoriti!") imitation, I can just imagine another attack on US soil. And this one making 9-11 seem like a bad hair day.

How does this relate to OLPC? Easy - if the power grid is down, we can't use our computers and how much stuff do you have saved on hard drives? PDFs, saved web pages, you name it. TFA didn't say if the consumer version would have the handy "wind it up and go" handle, but if it does, I'll be at the head of the line to buy one. That way when the guy with the internet-truck comes around, I'll be able to grab my e-mail.

I suppose I'll be modded down to the 13th level of hell for criticizing the cut_n_run congress ...

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Xtravar]

Buy a used laptop. It may not have the best battery life, but you'll get roughly what you want.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Oktober Sunset]

No, they're goatherds, shepherds herd sheep.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[jbengt]

You mean goatherd

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[duffolonious]

Hmmm... well, Murtha and Pelosi aside (I'll just say I disagree - cut n' run v. stay for eternity) - but I really think it would be very nice to have a computer that can run without power (via the hand crank). If it doesn't have that I probably won't get one.

http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/power_supply/ - I like the fact (if this is the case) that they are using LiFePO4 batteries - these also last a lot longer that the current Lithium-ion batteries.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Acer500]

I think it's been said a thousand times already, but I'll say it a thousand and one times: The target for the OLPC is not "the goat farmer in Kenya".

It's a middle ground, like the average child in my country (Uruguay) whose family makes U$ 4.000/year, we have a 99% literacy rate (better than the US) and 500.000 Internet users out of 3.000.000 inhabitants, but most of those have to go to cyber-cafés for computer usage (which charge 50c/hour, and are very popular among children and teenagers).

Uruguay has already commited to buy 50 million dollars in laptops and expects to buy even more:

http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/uruguay/uruguay_ olpc.html

For now, it is quite common for families to buy used/refurbished desktops for 120 U$D in several installments.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[Ant P.]

You brought up a good point there.

The GP can go buy anything he wants instead of an OLPC, but in the end all he's got is a bland generic x86 PC/laptop. This is the first time I've ever seen any attempt at major innovation in a PC.
It's a shame really... if other companies put this much effort into trying something original, the world probably wouldn't still be stuck using a UI from 14 years ago.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[morgan_greywolf]

Again, 4,000/year is still wayyy poor compared to the average poor family in the U.S., which makes about $15,000-$20,000. that's what I'm saying.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[jabuzz]

If the cost of living in Uruguay is much lower than the USA (and I guess it is) then the difference may well be much less than you think.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[AlHunt]

>(I'll just say I disagree - cut n' run v. stay for eternity)

I need to mark my calendar. A political disagreement on slashdot that didn't didn't get disagreeable. We all need to have solar panels so we can charge our laptops in case of lengthy power outages - unless we can get OLPC wind-up laptops.

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[wirelessbuzzers]

The GP can go buy anything he wants instead of an OLPC, but in the end all he's got is a bland generic x86 PC/laptop. This is the first time I've ever seen any attempt at major innovation in a PC.
It's a shame really... if other companies put this much effort into trying something original, the world probably wouldn't still be stuck using a UI from 14 years ago.

14? The original Mac came out in 1984, making mainstream window/mouse/button GUIs 23 this year.

I think a lot of the XO's innovation is about making it educationally and socially useful on a tiny screen for Kru-speaking children who have never even seen a computer before.

Anyway, if you're looking for major innovations, how about the Newton, and the subsequent lines of tablet and/or palmtop PCs? That's just one off the top of my head...

Re:They seem firm in their patronizing pity

[mrchaotica]

if you spend that much on a windows laptop then you sir are a foaming at the mouth moron.

Hey, fuck you! Maybe you're too much of a foaming-at-the-mouth moron to realize it, but there are some laptops high-end enough out there to be worth $2000 (and running Windows is irrelevant to that).

Sans kill switch?

[OglinTatas]

I would certainly be interested, if I knew that it did not include a kill switch which would allow my government or anyone to destroy it on a whim. linky

I hope they do it

[arivanov]

I know at least several cases where people working on medical diagnostics projects have tried to get their hand on the OLPC kit for the purposes of field medical lab automation and have been told to sod off.

There is a long list of diagnostic technologies which require a computer for analysing data in the field. At the moment this means using either a specialised system or a commercial ruggedized portable. In either case the overall bill for a small field lab goes into the many 1000$ range which makes this technology prohibitive for mass deployment. OLPC class hardware would have been the perfect replacement bringing the cost down into a range which will make it affordable.

So if the OLPC gets sidelined and the same kit is available commercially, personally I would give one big cheer. This will mean that people like Medicines sans Frontiers will finally be able to have proper diagnostic (and medical records) kit anywhere they go, no matter how in the middle of nowhere it is.

So which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

> OLPC Manufacturer to Sell $200 Laptop On Open Market ...

> the XO computer itself is not for sale on the open market.

Distribution Control

[petermmcc]

Am I the only who keeps tabs on this project who worries that the OLPC OX laptops are going to end up in the hands of people who want them as toys or cheap low-cost laptops? Call me cynical but selling these things to governments in Third World countries and expecting the distribution to be done in an honest and ethical way so that every single one ends up in the hands of a deserving child seems hopelessly naive to me. What safeguards are in place to prevent some corrupt government bureaucrat from doling them out to political cronies, black marketeers or any other undeserving party (for financial gain or not) and then just claiming that they have turned up missing or that they never got them and that they need more?

It makes sense to me to sell them outright to the general public but make them pay a fair market price to fund the distribution system so that real controls are in place to make sure that these things aren't sold in flea markets or used for nefarious purposes. I mean the intentions of OLPC are very honorable from an idealistic viewpoint- I'm just very worried that these things in the real world are just going to be too valuable to get passed down to the distribution chain to their intended recipients. We're sending what are essentially consumer electronic toys in to the heart of the poorest places on the planet and expecting that the people in control of these regions won't try to scheme and maneuver this project for personal financial or political gain. To prevent that real controls need to be in place and those controls can only be provided with a distribution system that is well funded. The funding should come from the people who want to buy these things as personal toys with the added benefit that there then will be less incentive for these things to end up on the black market.

Re:Distribution Control

[Maximum Prophet]

Mod parent up. He's absolutely right.

Allowing these to be sold by Amazon for $200, will disincentivize governments from buying them for $100 and trying to sell in bulk at a profit. If you know you can get a clean machine for $200 are you going to pay $100 + $n for a "dirty" machine? (where $n is large enough to make it worth their hassle)

Re:Distribution Control

[An Onerous Coward]

First defense: The governments in question are buying the machines, not receiving them as gifts. They're putting some real money into the hardware, and that gives them some incentive to make sure they don't fall off the back of a truck.

Second defense: They look, smell, and taste like toys for children. Everyone will know that a business exec using an OLPC as his primary laptop did not come by it honorably.

Third defense: It's not exactly high-powered hardware. The OS is weird and the applications are weird and you're really constrained as to the OSes that can run on it. So it won't be as useful outside its target demographic as you seem to think.

Fourth defense: The hardware is designed to be most useful when sitting among a bunch of other laptops of the same model. Mesh networks, collaborative applications, Internet connectivity, etc. Taking it away from the network hobbles it somewhat.

Your suggestion amounts to "sell them to rich people rather than giving them to poor people." Certainly, that would reduce the incentive for the owners to hock them, but doesn't that defeat the whole idea?

Re:Distribution Control

[Russ Nelson]

expecting the distribution to be done in an honest and ethical way so that every single one ends up in the hands of a deserving child seems hopelessly naive to me.

So then you should conclude that they're actually not that naive. The question is not what you ask, but instead "Given that there will be massive fraud, waste, and corruption, is it worth doing anyway?" and their answer is "yes". Of course, OLPC can't actually *say* that, because their customers are the governments who will commit the fraud, waste, and corruption.

Re:Distribution Control

[jabuzz]

That's fine there is a massive market for these devices for kids in rich first world countries. In fact the only reason I want one is so that I can give one to my nice/godaughter for a present. She's four and half and very intrested in computers. This is the idea gift for her (specially if they do a pink model.

Re:Distribution Control

[PitaBred]

$200? I've invested more than that in my DS. You bet I would, to know it's clean. $50 is easily approaching the size of marginal returns of having to deal with "dirty" hardware, especially when it has a disabling daemon on it.

Re:Distribution Control

[Panaflex]

Selling them commercially will have little effect here. There's already demand for low cost machines - without the XO on the market. If anything, having a commercial version available will put downward pressure on illegal reselling of the machines - because those that can afford to buy them legally will probably do so.

Re:Distribution Control

[Acer500]

Am I the only who keeps tabs on this project who worries that the OLPC OX laptops are going to end up in the hands of people who want them as toys or cheap low-cost laptops? Call me cynical but selling these things to governments in Third World countries and expecting the distribution to be done in an honest and ethical way so that every single one ends up in the hands of a deserving child seems hopelessly naive to me.
I live in Uruguay, one of the early adopters of the OLPC program. I know it's tough to believe, but although our governments are corrupt and inefficient, we do have a somewhat working democracy, and this is one of the "hot" issues where the opposition (and people like myself) will be keeping close tabs on the government, which will probably ensure honest distribution.

Believe me, the opposition would like nothing better than a scandal involving this (it would slur the current governing party, which is a frontrunner for the next elections, plus it involves stealing from children so it would be doubly harmful), while the current government would tout it as a huge archievement and will use it as PR whenever it can ("we delivered a computer to every child in the country!!!").

What safeguards are in place to prevent some corrupt government bureaucrat from doling them out to political cronies, black marketeers or any other undeserving party (for financial gain or not) and then just claiming that they have turned up missing or that they never got them and that they need more?
Besides the political issue, there's also a mostly free press in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil. Here we have an investigative TV show which likes to air cases like government officials using public cars, offices, etc. for private use, bribery, etc. and there are similar ones in Argentina and probably Brazil. It would be a huge coup (and ratings boost) to uncover such a case.

I have more faith in our public institutions and our press than I currently have for US press and institutions (see: US elections).

Re:Distribution Control

[Kopretinka]

What safeguards are in place to prevent some corrupt government bureaucrat from doling them out to political cronies, black marketeers or any other undeserving party (for financial gain or not) and then just claiming that they have turned up missing or that they never got them and that they need more?

In short: the sheer number of the laptops.

Say a government buys 100,000 of these laptops. How many cronies and other undeserving parties will want one, especially if it's basically a smart toy? I don't think there would be many cases of somebody hoarding thousands of these laptops, which could really make a dent, so even if you give one to all members of your very extended family and friends, 90% of them will still end up with deserving children.

That's my theory, that is.

Re:Distribution Control

[phaggood]

> Say a government buys 100,000 of these laptops. How many cronies and other undeserving parties will want one

Or, stated in "US" units; say you allocated $120B to an overseas invasion; how much of that $$ will purchase bullet-proof vests and HumVee armor, and how much will end up as f-ing humongous profits to defense contractor officers? Still, we gotta spend the whole pile of money so at least MOST of it will end up actually helping the troops.

Re:Distribution Control

[Anonymous Coward]

They look, smell, and taste like toys for children I don't know about you, but none of my child's toys smell like dried fish or any other smell associated with a cheap Chinese factory.
(note the word cheap, not all Chinese factories smell)

PCs like cell phones?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The price of a basic PC, with just enough power to do browsing, email, a little bit of photoshop and screen shows and minor word processing has come under 200$ at bulk price. It is not inconceivable that some DSL/broadband company would not give it away for a two year broadband contract. Google has bought so much of capactity in the dark fibers, that it can become a viable broadband provider and give away PCs for free. And Google is also gaining valuable experience running metro area size WiFi network in Cupertino. Further Google has to negate the fundamental advantage MSFT has, that is ever changing standards, comaptibility issues.

Roll it all into one, you should expect GooglePC/BroadBand (beta ofcourse) sometime soon. If the hardward price drops far enough it can even sustain itself giving away the hardware and live on advertisements alone!

Re:PCs like cell phones?

[Brunellus]

Other vendors tried this during the First Great Internet Bubble. Where are they now?

Re:PCs like cell phones?

[uab21]

Been tried before (PeoplePC and some others IIRC). Didn't work then. What do you think has changed in the last ten years to make it viable now? (Those previous PCs were as capable of email/Web then as what you are talking about now Oh, I forgot - Google makes everything better.

Re:PCs like cell phones?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What do you think has changed in the last ten years to make it viable now?

1. Price of hardware. Has dropped significantly

2. Someone with deep pockets who has already bought humoungous amount of bandwidth at bargain basement prices.

3. Cable/Telcos forming cartels to keep broadband prices artificially high and thwarting Metro WiFi even in areas where they dont provide service, like extended suburbs, rural areas and smaller towns. The law prohibits governments from providing wifi, but it cant stop a private company from offering one

4. Google could sell broadband at cost, which is next to nothing because it bought the bandwidth at bargain basement prices after the bubble burst, the monthly fee is just to recoup the cost of hardware.

Re:PCs like cell phones?

[uab21]

The price of hardware has dropped enough that you can have a laptop, while previously it was a desktop. With modern software, the functional ability of the machines are the same compared to the less demanding software of the time. I call that a wash.

Why does everyone assume that all Google's dark fiber is for us? Google has rather large bandwidth requirements, which only get larger, and they are focused on grid type distributed processing for their business. That dark fiber could be there as their insurance against being held up by the backbone providers they have/will piss off. The market for bargain basement systems is small (how many internet appliances did you buy when they came out?), why should they risk it? Besides, the cell phone industry is the *last* industry I would like to emulate - Verizon gives me a free/reduced phone and then chips away at what it's capabilities are after the fact with software updates so that BitPim can't run - Yeah - Google needs to link themselves with that type of behavior in people's minds.

Re:PCs like cell phones?

[soft_guy]

Other vendors tried this during the First Great Internet Bubble. Where are they now? Apparently FreePC was bought by eMachines.

Puzzled

[rlp]

I don't understand why they are not trying to market this for the educational market in developed countries. At $200 it would make sense for mass distribution to secondary school students in developed countries. With an office suite (OpenOffice) and a browser, it would fit most of the needs of secondary school students. Add an IDE (Eclipse) and it could be used in introductory programming classes. Instead of a computer lab, students could bring it to class, for note-taking, or to read documents or view presentations. And students could take the units home to do homework.

It would also help the effort to distribute machines to poor countries by increasing production volumes (and lowering costs), as well as resulting in more software being available for the laptops. So, I'm puzzled why they're not looking at this market.

Re:Puzzled

[fireboy1919]

Add an IDE (Eclipse) and it could be used in introductory programming classes.

My copy of Eclipse is currently running at 267MB. The install directory is over 1 GB. There's no way that's happening. Also, there's no way that will look okay on the tiny screens they've got on these things.

This is NOT a computer in the traditional sense. It's a PDA in a different form factor.

Re:Puzzled

[Miseph]

Contrary to popular belief, there are portions of the developed world that hope to do almost exactly that. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was one of the first places to join up with OLPC (granted, the fact that it's based out of MIT is a huge part of that), and as a proud Massachusan I assure you that we aren't exactly living in the third world here (disregard the New Yorkers who think otherwise... I think it's fair to say that if you haven't left your borough in a decade that you aren't qualified to talk about other places as if you have a clue).

There's a lot of FUD about the OLPC project, and I'm not sure what's worse: the ill-conceived notion that improving educational technology benefits less people than improving food and water distribution (most people in the world have a steady supply of food and water, but lack the educational opportunities to really participate in the global economy or reap the economic benefits of doing so, obviously some do not, but they aren't the focus of this particular project), or the outright lie that OLPC is only available to or intended for goat farmers from Botswana.

Re:Puzzled

[phaggood]

> I don't understand why they are not trying to market this for the educational market in developed countries.
Because in "developed" countries we have "developed marketing departments" who's job it is to make sure that the local ed tech buys "only the best" for the kids, even if "the best" is way more capacity than most kids writing papers and watching flash-powered chemistry sims online need.

This situation is not unique to schools:
There's a $200M study to track the effects of pre-school on children - does it *really* take that kind of money to track a bunch of pre-school kids?
We have pretty good roads, but a large segment of the population still thinks you won't be safe on the road unless you drive a $70,000 mil-spec automobile.
If you don't have insurance, you can spend $12,000 just for cracked ribs.

We'll spend $100M/mile on a ROAD.

We have so much $$ in the US ($3 TRILLON FY2007 Fed Budget) we seem to believe that there are no cheap problems.

Re:Puzzled

[An Onerous Coward]

I'm having a hard time imagining these laptops running OpenOffice. Eclipse? Simply no way. Nano seems user-friendly enough.

Re:Puzzled

[rlp]

> My copy of Eclipse is currently running at 267MB. The install directory is over 1 GB

OK, good point. Bluebird IDE and AbiWord (Word Processing) - OR - add a CF or SD slot to the laptop.

Re:Puzzled

[phaggood]

> My copy of Eclipse is currently running at 267MB. The install directory is over 1 GB

My high school programming students used Blue-J with great success building web apps.

Re:Puzzled

[Eternauta3k]

Add an IDE (Eclipse) and it could be used in introductory programming classes

vi, cc and make. They'll learn a lot and it's blazing fast.

Re:Puzzled

[nuzak]

> vi, cc and make. They'll learn a lot and it's blazing fast.

You must be a hoot when someone asks you what car to get.

Friend: "I'm not sure, should I get the hybrid or the TDI?"
You: "Walk."

Friend: "Ha ha, okay, seriously though, the TDI's got pretty similar mileage, but I have to find the diesel stations-"
You: "Walk."

Friend: "I'm shopping for a car here, I'm wondering which car-"
You: "Walk."

Re:Puzzled

[fireboy1919]

You're not thinking small enough. It doesn't have enough RAM for either of those programs. Abiword is like 40MB in memory, and Bluebird is still a java IDE.

*Anything* with Java (short of J2ME) is too big to fit the whole program in memory. It doesn't matter how big a CF slot you have - not fitting in memory is the same as not being able to run on the device.

How about Nano+Makefiles? That's the kind of thing that will fit.

Re:Puzzled

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not quite right. Walking in no way is to be considered fast, perhaps motorbike would be a better fit? Since a motorbike can be fast, but isn't a car.

You can't give laptops to schoolchildren

[BigHungryJoe]

what if they use it to meet online predators? Doesn't anyone watch "To Catch a Predator?"

It's like giving a monkey a loaded gun.

Re:You can't give laptops to schoolchildren

[Aladrin]

Whoot! Bad analogy :D

It's more like giving a monkey an unloaded gun and bullets, with an anti-monkey nut making hand-motions. It takes a little work to get there, but it's definitely possible.

Re:You can't give laptops to schoolchildren

[teh_chrizzle]

just set the hosts file to resolve *.myspace.com to 127.0.0.1 and BAM! problem solved.

after all, it's myspace that attracts predators, not ignorant children with no adult supervision.

Re:You can't give laptops to schoolchildren

[phaggood]

> what if they use it to meet online predators?
What if they use it to get enough education to avoid offline predators?

Special Charity Editions

[davidwr]

Can I pay $50 more and have a special "OLPC Sponsor" logo etched into the case, with the $50 going directly to the OLPC project?

Think (RED) only different.

Think how chic this could be:
- cool logo
- cool charity
- indie coolness: Look ma, no Microsoft!

Re:Special Charity Editions

[magarity]

Can I pay $50 more and have a special "OLPC Sponsor" logo etched into the case
 
Alas, I think you'll find that custom etching will run you more than $50. Still, this idea has some merit. They've said though, and it makes sense, that the reason they won't sell the OLPC machine is because as soon as there is a legit market for the things there will be nefarious individuals who will procede to steal the donated ones and recycle them back into the sale channel.

Re:Special Charity Editions

[neonfrog]

And what's to stop that from happening anyway?

Re:Special Charity Editions

[mlush]

And what's to stop that from happening anyway?

I seem to recall they have a way of spotting stolen laptops and shutting them down as soon as the are connected to the internet.

Re:Special Charity Editions

[neonfrog]

That may work IF all the laptops actually get to the children, and the children only. But they have to get there first.

Example: Local constabulary orders 150 for their children (and they have the "paperwork" to back it up) but they only have 100 kids. The extra 50 are sold on the black market and end up on eBay. You *know* this is going to happen.

If the laptops get to the kids, then it's easy for a teacher/administrator to see that Kid X doesn't have their computer anymore and the stolen SN is black listed across the net (and the kid gets a new one).

If the unit is stolen BEFORE the teachers/administrators ever see it, or they are co-opted as part of the corruption, then there is actually no real mechanism for theft prevention.

Never underestimate the converging axes of poverty/corruption/greed and market desire. The repeated /. desire for these laptops actually MAKES this market exist and INSPIRES corruption.

Re:Special Charity Editions

[soft_guy]

Its harder because there isn't a legitimate sales channel to sell into. People whom you might be dealing with would potentially have a reason to know you were nefarious merely because you are trying to sell an OLPC. If there are legitimate OLPCs on the market, it would be harder to know that.

No machines for ordinary developers

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess if no OLPC machines are available for us, then it's because they don't want to easily allow your average everyday sort of developer actually to be able to build software for the OLPC and actually be able to test it on the real hardware. This is the same reason most developers don't test their webapps on Macs.

Open Source my ass. How about we try open market first?

hiding something?

[TheSHAD0W]

Maybe they're going to be even uglier than what everyone is thinking they'll be like? I don't see how that's possible; in any case, I'm sure a few will "escape" from wherever they've been deployed to the US. But the lack of access to the device by first-world coders will tend to reduce application availability and ultimate usefulness. Maybe someone could release an emulator?

Re:hiding something?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure a few will "escape" from wherever they've been deployed to the US.

You'd have to be a serious Ayn Rand fan to sit in a coffee shop using a bright green laptop that was obviously stolen from a third world child. ;-)

Re:hiding something?

[trentblase]

http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/devel opment/

How to lift children out of poverty.

[supersnail]

1. Make nice little $200 Laptop.
2. Announce to Geeks around the world "You cant have one".
3. Give Laptop to poor child.
4. Poor child puts laptop on e-bay.
5. Geeks gets kool laptop.
6. Child no longer poor.

Re:How to lift children out of poverty.

[br0d]

o/~ There comes a time...when we heed a certain cause, when the world must come together as one... There are kids handwriting...it's time to lend a hand, let's send, some laptops to them allllllll o/~ o/~We arm the world We arm the children We haven't had enough attacks So let's increase them o/~

Re:How to lift children out of poverty.

[raddan]

Cool. I finally know what ??? means.

Re:How to lift children out of poverty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but will it run Linux?

*ducks*

Re:How to lift children out of poverty.

[Graham J - XVI]

A kid with $200 is still a poor kid ;)

Hmmm

[Anon-Admin]

I have watched the OLPC for some time. As time goes by, It seems like less of a deal. I just picked up a nice Compaq with a 15" wide screen, 512 meg of memory, 802.11 card etc. At Best Buy it was $350. By the time they get the OLPC out the door, normal low end laptops will be in the $200 range.

Re:Hmmm

[phaggood]

> .. nice Compaq .. Best Buy .. $350
> By the time they get the OLPC out the door, normal low end laptops will be in the $200 range.

Find twin 2nd graders; give one the Compaq and one a OLPC to use for one semester. At the end of the school year, one machine will come back useable, one will be poured out from a paper bag.

Re:Hmmm

[hey!]

The "one laptop per child" is just the "elevator pitch" for the project. In case you don't know what an elevator pitch is, it is how you describe your project/product to somebody with money and limited attention span who you bump into in an elevator. Your mission is to convince him you are worth a good look before the door opens.

Moore's law will bring conventional laptops into spitting distance of the financial parameters needed for OLPC, but not necessarily in terms of the device's operational characteristics. There are a lot of costly assumptions built into a stanard laptop, which include, but are not limited to (1) a benign office environment; (2) availability of AC power except for short stretches; (3) system administrators who can take care of networking the computer to the rest of the universe and all that that implies; (4) a user base highly familiar with a UI dictated by a handful of preexisting programs that meet their most common needs.

Re:Hmmm

[jamesshuang]

Umm.... I'd doubt that an OLPC will survive much bashing either. If one had to pour the compaq out of the paper bag, well the best the OLPC can probably do is be picked piece by piece from a box. Either way, the OLPC's software is open source, and sticking that on the low end compaq would be fine too.

Re:Hmmm

[An Onerous Coward]

First, the $200 laptop of the article is not the OLPC laptop. It's a separate laptop that will be sold by Quanta, and based on the OLPC's design. The OLPC laptop is currently being sold to governments for $150, and that price will continue to drop as hardware gets cheaper.

Second, it doesn't matter much if you can get the sort of hardware that suits your needs for the same price, because OLPC laptops are trying to solve a different problem. Normal low-end laptops are bigger, less rugged, have more moving parts and higher maintenance costs, and are more power hungry. They also require an AC outlet to charge.

Lastly, before OLPC came along, nobody was really thinking about totally redesigning the laptop to hit the $100-$200 price point. Once OLPC showed that it might be possible, major manufacturers tried to hit a comparable price point, but using the "same laptop we've always built, but less so" approach. I think Quanta is going to have some real success here, and everyone else will struggle to keep up.

Re:Hmmm

[duffolonious]

Re: power requirements - the OLPC laptop is _very_ low.

Much better than standard laptop... this is the clincher for me.

Re:Hmmm

[adisakp]

Yes normal laptops are getting cheaper -- but normal laptops can't operate in an area without electrical power. And they're certainly not kid-proofed against spilling on the keyboard, protected by a heavy clamshell against dropping or breaking, environmentally sealed to work in desert/dusty conditions, etc. By the time you're looking at a hardened laptop for rough environments, you're going to pay $3,000 or more.

Re:Hmmm

[muellerr1]

Normal low-end laptops are already in that range on eBay. I got a 6 year old 12" 500MHz 512MB Vaio for under $100. I think the thing that people seem to be jazzed about are the ruggedness and manual power generation, both of which are still vapor at $200. Your OLPC money would be better spent on a used laptop and a manual generator.

Re:Hmmm

[phaggood]

> Umm.... I'd doubt that an OLPC will survive much bashing either.

I invite you to purchase a LeapFrog-like laptop for any toddler and have him play "tag" with it, then give him the Compaq and the same instructions.

OLPC is built more like the Leapfrog device than the Compaq - a similar situation to cheap euro-cars that have excellent crash protection, and gigantic SUV's that kill everyone onboard if it brakes too quickly. :-)

Re:Hmmm

[DogDude]

Yeah, you're exactly right. And everything you say is why I think that this entire project is vaporware. If what they're saying is true (super rugged at the cost of an iPod), then a commercial manufacturer would have done it long ago.

Re:Hmmm

[evilviper]

I just picked up a nice Compaq with a 15" wide screen, 512 meg of memory, 802.11 card etc.

Does it operate on 5W of power? Can it be used as an e-Book reader, basically with power entirely off? Does it work in direct sunlight?

The OLPC itself is somewhat too low-end to be used as a modern system. That said, throw in a hard drive, use a faster version of the Geode CPU, and improve the screen (color) picture quality and make it 16:9, and it'll destroy most everything out there, and not just by lower price.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you hate the poor?

Marketing to the undeveloped countries

[boyfaceddog]

The only thing you can count on when you use one of these laptops if that the web ads will all be there. Doesn't anyone see that this is just a way to make sure these poor, undeveloped countries have access to all of the millions of dollars of ads generated by the "developed" countries.

Yes, intelligent people will use these for great things, the rest will just look at the pretty ads.

w00t!

[teh_chrizzle]

i have been shopping for a new laptop since my wife is in grad school, which means that my current laptop is also in grad school. buying the current one was a sort of existential hardship... paying $600 for something that is too underpowered to play games on. perhaps a small device with a comparatively small pricetag and with a keyboard big enough to take notes and things on might be just what the doctor ordered.

Re:w00t!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the word "existential" in a dictionary.

Re:w00t!

[teh_chrizzle]

existential
-adjective
1. pertaining to existence

apparently you don't game.

You call THAT a business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the "X. ..." step?

Why no "X. Profit!"? No profit!, no invest!

That's the problem with you geeks - no business sense.

Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Orion Blastar]

and has plans to make their own low cost laptop.

Many techno-savvy people have also criticized the laptop and Nelson Mandela demonstrated it to the UN and the crank handle broke off in his hand.

I heard it is very poor quality.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Russ Nelson]

I heard it is very poor quality.

.... and I heard that you're pretty stupid.

But perhaps neither of us should repeat heresay? I have one; it's very well made. Anyway, it was Koffi Annan who broke the crank, not Nelson Mandela. The crank was a bad idea anyway since children can't generate enough power with their hands. That's why kids' bikes have footbrakes, not handbrakes. So the human power supply will probably be more like a yo-yo. You could just pull on the string, or tie it to a board and use your foot. Takes any DC voltage between 10 and 20 volts, so there's all sorts of possibilities. Micro-hydro, or solar, or human powered, or you put your dog on a tredle (don't laugh, that's an old farmer trick).

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Orion Blastar]

Perhaps I got the wrong person breaking the crank but the crank did break. But at least I don't resort to name calling like a 4 year-old child would when I disagree with someone.

Thailand says they don't want the OLPC, and so does India critics from those countries have cited that the OLPC is not mature enough and doesn't have the quality that they need for their education system.

Have you seen the OLPC specs?

433Mhz processor
7.5 inch LCD display
No rotating media (no floppies, CDs, DVDs)
No hard drive but a 1024Mbyte flash drive.

The quality of this laptop is far below the standard that other laptop makers use, while this quality might have been good for 1993, times have changed. India, Thailand, and other nations want a more mature OLPC program with a better quality laptop that can compete with modern laptops. Students want to use CDs and DVDs on the laptops, and be able to bring data to them from older systems that use floppy disks. They want to store media files and that 1024M of storage will fill up fast. I mean for the modern student that wants to record a video presentation for class, this laptop will not do. Not only that but the 7.5 inch screen is tiny and hard to read.

This looks like the type of Laptop that Mattel or some other toy maker might make. Are you kidding me?

If anyone should have their intelligence questioned it is the people in the OLPC program.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stating the advantages of the project as disadvantages.

The lack of moving parts (no hard drive, optical drive, or floppy drive) is ideal for the bumps and shocks that a child will inevitably put the device through; this alone makes it highly desirable over current offerings. The laptop looks like something Mattel might make because it is sealed against dust and liquids and because its toy-like appearance makes it less desirable for thieves who would sell it on the black market. The screen is perhaps the most cutting-edge hardware in the laptop; it has an effective resolution in excess of 200 dpi, performs excellently in a range of lighting conditions, can operate in a low-power mode, and is cheap to make.

Its processing power is adequate for its application. Nobody complains that their cell phone can't play Quake.

The laptops have wireless networking and USB jacks which can provide access to extra storage and media devices if they are necessary.

And the crank was dropped last year in favor of an external power unit.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[soft_guy]

Nobody complains that their cell phone can't play Quake. I do. Constantly.

"Dude, this cell phone is teh suck! I could be playing Quake right now! If I were playing Quake on my cell phone, you'd be so p0wn3d!"

Let's face it, the specs on the OLPC are laughable; you could get a better laptop for $200 off of eBay.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Russ Nelson]

Are you kidding me?

I would ask "Are you stupid?" but you've proven it adequately. You're thinking about this COMPLETELY wrong. Don't think of it has a "laptop". Think of it as "electronic book" with keyboard, touchpad, wifi, camera, usb slots, microphone, speakers, 400MBytes of free storage for book, convenient carrying handle, day-and-night screen, oh, and it also runs Python and a word processor and games. If you look at it that way, and then compare it to the money they're ALREADY spending on schoolbooks, you'll find that it STARTS OFF by saving money. The laptop is free once you buy the electronic book.

If you want to be a real bleeding heart, think of the blind children who will have ON PAR access to the SAME TEXTBOOKS as their sighted peers. Think of the children!

If you compare it to a laptop, well, that's only your first mistake. You can only (and do, enthusiastically) go downhill from there.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Orion Blastar]

I am not the one calling it a laptop, the OLPC program has the "L" in it that stands for laptop. So if you want to call someone stupid for calling it a laptop, blame the company that makes it.

OEBPC makes better sense as One Electronic Book Per Child.

The only ones stupid here is you and people who made the thing.

I had a blind grandfather who fought for books to be printed in braille in public libraries, such books exist if you ask for them. So I ask if a blind person can use this "electronic book" and wonder if the screen has bumps that can rise up, because when you start replacing paper books with this thing, it is really going to hurt blind students if it does not.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Orion Blastar]

Don't worry about a black market, even thieves are not that desperate that they would want to steal an obvious POS like that pathetic thing. I think they'd rather steal a "real" laptop than some "toy" laptop. A pity that the "toy" laptop will make the child using it, wish he or she had a "real" laptop like those students not in third world nations. Way to discriminate against third world students and give them an inferior product to that in the first world.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Orion Blastar]

Equal rights for equal laptops!

Text to speech software mispronounces "C"'s as "S"'s and makes other mistakes and are unfair to the blind, and double unfair to the deaf and blind.

I suppose next you give third world nations our unused 286 and 386 systems with Windows 3.0 and MS-DOS 5.0 on them? Perhaps they would care for OS/2 2.0 instead?

Electronic Books, there are eBook devices with better features and about the same or lower prices on the market. Not to mention there are a $99 PalmOS devices that have better features than the OLPC device.

You are stupid enough to think that this BS actually does people in third world nations a favor? More the fool you! Just STFU because you don't know what the heck you're talking about and I've visited Thailand and I know what they want more than you do. I actually did my research and you didn't. I studied international management and foreign relations, and I graduates with honors from college. That proves that I am not stupid, but you are.

So go die in a fire, and use your "real" laptop for yourself, because chances are even you wouldn't use that XO OLPC piece of sh*t that you are defending as your primary computer, hypocrite!

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it, the specs on the OLPC are laughable; you could get a better laptop for $200 off of eBay.

If you are looking for a fast laptop, maybe you should buy a fast laptop. If you are looking for a solid-state, ruggedized device with wireless networking, keyboard, gamepad, graphics tablet, camera, speakers, low power consumption, and a sunlight-readable screen, then perhaps you would prefer the OLPC.

The OLPC is not designed to fulfill the same requirements as a commodity laptop. There are many other computing devices that cost more than $200 yet have "inferior" specs... Cameras, cell phones, media players, portable entertainment systems, eBook readers, PDAs, medical monitoring devices, etc. These can perform some of the functions of a laptop and vice versa, but people buy them anyway. Why? Because they are better suited to a particular task.

The $200 commodity laptop from eBay would not last a month being trundled between home and school by an elementary school student in a rural area. The OLPC might. Just because you can't see a use for the device doesn't mean it isn't useful to other people.

Re:Thailand rejects the OLPC project

[Deliveranc3]

Agree with parent, grandparent is a fool. I've held one, they're awsome, keyboard is a little small and touchpad was strange (Something they changed in the new revision.)

I'd buy one...

[bxtl57]

I would *love* something useful enough to browse/read/write/email on the go, but cheap enough I wouldn't stroke out when it inevitably got lost/stolen/squashed/hosed with a Diet Pepsi.

If it was as rugged as claimed, @ $249 I'd by another for my 6 year old to keep him off the machines I actually care about. I predict somebody is going to package this for the children's market and discover a license to print money...

Re:I'd buy one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo DS with Opera pack. I paid $150 for the DS Lite, $80 for modchip cart + extra ram cart (opera isn't available in North America) and I browse/email/msn when I can find wifi quite well. Plus, it's a great gaming system...

last years laptops $400

[peter303]

Keep your eye open and you can find two year old models (512MB, 80GB) laptops in the $400 range. Will run 3rd party software.

OLPC not for sale, not a company

[capseed]

Note that Quanta's mobile laptop, even if the underlying hardware and most of the software are the same, is NOT the OLPC machine. AFAIK OLPC has always wanted their project to exist outside of commercial markets. One of the main reasons for this was to help prevent a black market trade in these machines. If you have an XO, and you are not a child registered to use it, it will be very obvious that it is stolen.

As far as the governments taking the laptops and doing something evil or keeping them from their intended users, does anybody know how far OLPC is going to step in with the education and support issues? Negroponte has said many many many times that OLPC is not a hardware project, it is an education project based on decades of research with children and computers. It would seem odd if they didn't send their own people out in the field to provide support and guidance to the teachers and students who get to experience the XO. I would love to be one of them!

Summary:
Quanta != OLPC
OLPC != hardware project

Re:OLPC not for sale, not a company

[capseed]

just wanted to respond to some other comments people made...

This is not just "last year's laptop." At the very least, it uses a pretty interesting new wireless card design for integrated mesh networking stuff. I remember that because there was all this controversy about the card having some binary blob in it that Quanta or whoever didn't have the rights to open source.

To the comments about surfing the web, dangers of online predators, etc...I'm pretty sure that in many of the target regions, there is NO WEB ACCESS. That's why the mesh networking stuff is so important. The XOs really rely on community interaction and group participation to give students the educational benefit.

sorry for the double post

Re:OLPC not for sale, not a company

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe a penis bird could help him forget his worries.
Maybe he's already discovered this and will never post a story again?

I know if I were a Slashdot author and suddenly discovered penis birds, I would get one and play with it 24 hours a day.

http://smoke.rotten.com/bird

--

Re:OLPC not for sale, not a company

[Maximum Prophet]

If you have an XO, and you are not a child registered to use it, it will be very obvious that it is stolen.

Excellent point, but many years ago, my dad had some ham radio equipment stolen from his car when it was parked in our driveway. About a year after that, the stuff was found because it was tossed in the bushes. Once the theives got the stuff under the street lights, they realized that it wasn't CB, and thus was usless to them. My point is that people steal stuff all the time that they can't use, then destroy it when they figure out what they have.

Couldn't the original problem be rectified by the OLPC people publicly stating something like: "Lime green cased machines are licensed for the children. Red cases are for teachers/ developers, black cases are for everyone else." Since even swapping the case on a machine that costs between $100 and $200 would be prohibitive in the long run, that could keep the theft problem in check. (You'd still have the problem of one child stealing the laptop from another)

Re:OLPC not for sale, not a company

[jabuzz]

It's back to Economics 101 for Negroponte then. If there is no legitimate market then a black market *will* appear to fill the void. It is as simple as that.

I want one anyway.

[Fyzzler]

If Quanta will sell me an OLPC with 256 meg ram and a 1-2 Gig CF flash drive and the capability to run either Puppy or DSL Linux on it. I would buy one for $200.00 in a heartbeat.

Depending on how well it worked out, I might very well end up buying 5 of them, one for everybody in my family. Primary uses would be E-Book reader, web browser and email. I particularly like the nice screen and the capability to self charge, so you could take it camping/traveling without having to worry about remote power.

Re:I want one anyway.

[PitaBred]

take it camping/traveling without having to worry about remote power.

Dude. No. Just... no. Camping is for being AWAY from that stuff. Learn what it's like to be unplugged.

Simputer

[vivek7006]

Remember Simputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer/ ?

By the time it was released, it was overpriced and underwhelming. I wont be surprised is this device meets the same fate.

Re:Simputer

[phaggood]

>By the time it was released, it was overpriced and underwhelming
Yeah, you think people'd know better by now: Paul Allen's $2000 PDA

Oh wait, they do: $100 OLPC for education

Budget desktop for around

[davidwr]

As a point of comparison only:

I priced a budget desktop using parts:

Pentium D 805+ECS PT890T-A mobo: $90
Cheap PCI-X video card: $30
Cheap case+PS: $40
Cheap 30GB SATA drive: $30
Cheap DVD-RW: $40
512MB DDR2-PC4200 RAM: $45
Speakers, mouse, keyboard, monitor, all used total $35
Free OS: priceless
--------------------
Total: $305

You can probably do better but not a lot unless you use older parts.

You can also sometimes get "banged and dinged" or discontinued PCs at major retailers at a substantial discounts. I've seen complete PCs without monitors for under $300 more times than I can count. Sometimes even "new in box" factory-refurbs are under the $300 barrier, with Windows.

A few times a year, Fry's Electronics has their Linux PC marked down to around $100. It's very low end but what do you expect for a C-note?

Re:Budget desktop for around

[Acer500]

You can do much better than that (even over here - Uruguay - with overpriced parts).

AMD Sempron 2800+ and Asrock motherboard (everything onboard) = U$ 100
Taiwanese Case + PS + Mouse + Keyboard + Speakers = U$ 30
Cheap 20 Gb HDD = U$ 30
CD-Rom = U$ 10
512 MB = U$ 40
---
Total: U$ 210

Refurbished monitors are more expensive here (U$ 50 for a 17' CRT), it's still less than U$ 300, and in the third world.

A refurbished Pentium III with a 17' CRT and 256 Mb RAM, etc. sells for U$ 150 (refurbished desktops are huge sellers over here, there are companies that buy old corporate PCs from Europe and US and bring them here).

Total is $310 not $305

[davidwr]

That's $310.
I hired an ex-Arthur Anderson accountant to do my math.

Subsidize sales to poor countries

[HangingChad]

I'd pay $250.00 for one and they could take that extra $50.00 and use it to subsidize the cost of sending them to really poor countries and villages.

Why are they so fricking insistent on not selling them retail? I'd pay a lot to be able to whip out a bright green laptop and hand-crank it in the middle of a meeting. Don't mind me, please have your sales droid prattle on incessantly as if I weren't even here.

Intel Classmate PC, Personal Internet Computer

[davidwr]

Two other machines vying for the low-end space include:

Intel Classmate PC

Data Evolution Holdings' Personal Internet Communicator

Re:Intel Classmate PC, Personal Internet Computer

[Skjellifetti]

The Classmate includes Trusted Platform Module 1.2. Is this Intel's version of Treacherous Computing?

OLPC already obsolete as a geek fetish

[Anonymous Coward]

The OLPC missed their chance to get money from me. About one year ago I was offering to pay up front for one priced at three times the cost, to be delivered when they were finally made. Now I wouldn't buy one from a starving ethiopian, not even for $50, not even if it would feed his entire village for a year.

The reason is that other similar stuff has come out and is on the market. I now own a flash-disk-based, no-moving-parts, 200 MHz computer, and it only cost me $150.00 (it is even cheaper now). I am thinking of buying a similar 800 MHz computer, that will also have the ability to use a laptop harddrive (moving parts though!), to use as a low power consumption web server and printer server; that would be under $200. I may find an excuse for purchasing a similar Atmel-based system for only $70 (the fact that the Atmel based system is not x86 based is kind of a turn off though).

All of these systems are powered by DC. That means that if I wanted to bolt it all into a shiny aluminum breifcase, add some of those gel-cell lead-acid batteries for RC racers or a bank of NiMh cells, and make a laptop if I wanted. I could take apart one of those crank-based LED flashlights they now sell so cheaply and add that, and be famous for a day on hackaday.com.

I could do that all without having to wade through a bunch of self-righteous self-promoting by MIT Media Lab (a well spring of self promotion, if you are not familar with them) salesmen. So why buy an OLPC now ? For that matter, if you were the government of, oh, say THAILAND, which is where the Norhtec company I purchased my flash-based computer is located, why wouldn't you just buy the cheaper locally made product ? While the OLPC does integrate a lot, it's not as if rural people aren't familar, or can't find someone who is familar, with the concept of a car battery, old truck generator, and a bicycle. The OLPC has some integrated software, but even a third world mired in poverty country has one national university with a handful of students who know what linux and the internet are, you can hand out a MINISCULE amount of money to them to get a setup everyone can use to run these small computers on. It will just be Puppy Linux or Slax with the local language settings already done.

The OLPC is a concept whose time has come, and gone, and it's promoters should do what the Media Lab has always done -- claim victory and insist it was all just a "proof of concept" and charge on to the next big hype with which to milk their sponsors.

Reparing a laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

What attracts me to this machine is
1) the use of open source software
2) the fact there is at least some attention being given to making a laptop that isn't disposable.

I recently bought a 1000 laptop. A year later, it broke, the manufacturer didn't honor their warrenty and I had a choice between $500 to fix it-and a new laptop.

I expect with the XO machine, I'll at least be able to get parts and a service manual.

Overpriced compared to OLPC

[feranick]

OLPC offers a smaller packaging (it's a laptop!) and a superb screen, for 100 less. Are you sure your budget computer still stands the comparison?

Quanta is trying to protect their market

[rrohbeck]

of oversized, power-hungry laptops to run bloated OS's.

If the OLPC turns out to be a useful tool at $200, it could significantly hurt Quanta's OEM customers.

This is pure politics, though. If Quanta can churn out millions of OLPCs at under $100 cost and sell them at $200, they should be drooling all over the place and not worry about the other OEMs too much. But I'm sure they already feel the pressure from Dell & co.

Support costs

[tverbeek]

What about support costs? A small number of governments and NGOs are a lot less work to deal with than potentially tens of thousands of consumers.

It can probably run Windows XP

[Animats]

With the new hardware upgrade (256MB RAM, 1GB non-volatile, 433MHz CPU) the OLPC is now considered capable of running Windows XP. This may nor may not be a good thing.

Much better!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You can do all these things much cheaper than that.

For example $70 gets you http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2837651365.html . For less than $20 you can put together a board using an Atmel ARM micro or NXP ARM micro packed to the eyebrows with ADCs etc.

Re:Much better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's in a nice laptop formfactor that can be used anywhere and ready to go!

Mod parent up...

[hughk]

Thank heavens someone finally noted the screen. My $1K dell is useless in direct sunlight and even the shade can be insufficient. That, plus power and the general rugged design mean that it is a killer for outdoor applications.

Small time graft

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not nearly as much fraud, waste, and corruption as the current U.S. government. Don't look now, but the Bush gang has stolen several trillion dollars from the suckers (otherwise known as the rest of the U.S. population).