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$100 Laptop Repriced at $175
prostoalex writes "The $100 laptop introduced by Nicholas Negroponte as part of the One Laptop Per Child program will end up costing $175, Associated Press says. The demand for the program is apparent as 'seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white "XO" computers — Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya — but it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash.'"
why do they need these governments to sign on? Can't they just, you know, sell them to people? Why force them (via their governments) to buy one?
I was under the impression that either the governments in question would be buying them or they would be paid for by charities. The families getting these laptops sure as hell don't have the funds to pay for them, so to the end user they will be free. That means you need some way (on site administration) for the "right" people to get the laptops, and you need a request for the charities to respond to. These two requirements are the job of the governments of the people in need.
We are all just people.
Either you're a crazed hippie completely out of touch with reality, or you're a troll:
Euro value 4/26/05 = $1.29
Euro value 4/26/07 = $1.36
Not exactly spiraling out of control. Total loss of value in two years = 5.2%, not half.
Left 404: Why the RIGHT is WRONG
which are devices that hardly fit the description of "rugged"..
Have you actually used one? Like, at all? The machines are quite "rugged". Or were you just making a baseless claim?
As for why not desktop machines? Power requirements and portability are two of the reasons.
AND
Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.The project is still on track to its price target of $100, it is still in BETA FFS!
Quit with the FUD already! Theres nothing like working on something high profile to make you grow a bit of a distaste for /. hype!
As of today, one Euro = $1.36
It takes 36% more dollars to equal one Euro. The Franc doesn't exist any more. Your math abilities and world knowledge should seriously concern people.
Picking a couple of points isn't the most robust measure, especially with things as potentially volaile as currency. If you look at the five year trend, it doesn't look so good. The US dollar rallied a little in late 05, early 06, but generally it's steadily sinking down. The Grandparent post is radically overstating things, but the picture isn't as rosy as you want to make out either.
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OLPC would qualify as vapourware if:
For those of you keeping score, India's attempt at this died on the vine, Microsoft's $600-cell-phone-attached-to-keyboard-and-TV alternative does meet the criteria for vapourware. Intel's ClassmatePC is barely out of the gate. And AMD's offering seems to have been shelved (wisely, perhaps) in favour of OLPC.
Near as I can tell, OLPC is the one project that least resembles vapourware of all the announced projects out there.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Everything takes longer and costs more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you want a scaled-down version of a normal laptop, the Classmate PC is basically designed like that. You can see a direct comparison in this table. Frankly it looks clunky and lacking in creativity when compared to the XO.
Generally the XO is designed for durability and low power consumption, not speed. It also takes into account its very specific target audience in many small ways. It's not a general-purpose machine, it doesn't have any commercial aspirations, it's purely a laptop for children, particularly those in developing nations.
Unlike WebTV this has a very good screen -- it's small, but it's completely usable. It runs normal Linux applications (they don't fit into the environment that well unless you make some modifications, but they do run). The processor is x86. It has a reasonable amount of memory and disk -- small by today's standards, but still reasonable even by today's standards. 256Mb of memory is really quite good. Also, unlike those products, this is not a niche product. This is intended to be deployed in considerable scale, and so it's a viable target platform all on its own.
I was doing tech support to a school network in Uganda a couple of years ago. They had a room full of machines. This was a concrete building with a good roof, but even so the 'mud hut' effect still happened. The amount of dirt that got inside EVERYTHING was frankly astounding. I'll never forget the day I spent removing bat droppings from all the mice.
So in hot, dusty under-developed countries, it is a problem. And the OLPC's membrane keyboard and sealed widgets are certainly welcome.
-1 not first post
Many commodities (oil for example) are traded in USD
/., mention PetroEuros, duck, and run far, far away.
;-)
This is one reason why gasoline/petrol prices in Europe have remained relatively stable, even as the political situation in oil producing regions has caused crude prices to increase. Most oil producing nations trade in U.S. Dollars, so the price in Euros is now 40% cheaper than 2 years ago. Traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, it is quite obvious at the price differential of Dollar based international commodities. Gas prices, at least on both coasts of the U.S., are now about equal to what we pay in Europe, where 6 years ago we paid around 4 times what Americans were paying.
There are a few oil producing nations that have switched from petrodollars to petroeuros, which has seen their income stabilise as the dollar slips. What makes currency traders, central bank managers, and others who work with the U.S. Dollar lose sleep is the fear that some day soon, the rest of the OPEC countries will announce a switch from selling crude oil in Dollars to Euros. That would be a major blow to the stability of the Dollar, and if it were to happen, Americans would see gas prices from $10 to $25 per gallon at the pumps. It would also be a bad thing for Europe, because we would see our pump prices jump by at least 40%, and more likely the increase would be close to 100% as the world economies adjusted to the new "base" currency.
If you are ever in a bar in Brussels full of Eurocrats, and you want to completely derail all the conversations along the lines of a "mac vs. pc" flamefest on
the AC
ObOnTopic post I've managed to use an OLPC XO machine for a while, they are truly innovative little wonders. Even at $175 a piece, that means we'll soon be training up a whole new generation of bitter, jaded sysadmins
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Yeah, I was the info systems officer for a National Guard unit in Iraq. We had a mix of hardened laptops and off the shelf desktops. Lemme tell you which ones did better. We lost on average a desktop a month, and all told I had the hard drive on one of the hardened laptops die. This was over a one year period, and we were in decently built climate controlled wood structures. This program will do MUCH better with the laptops assuming they're as well built as claimed.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.