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How Classsmate PC Stacks Up Against OLPC
lisah writes "While the One Laptop Per Child project pulled itself together and shipped its first Beta machines, Intel was busy developing its own version, the Classmate PC. Inevitable comparisons will be made between the two (especially since OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte called Intel's move "predatory"), so Linux.com's Tina Gasperson and her kids took a Classmate PC for a test run to see how it does in the real world. The upshot? Good battery life, easy to use, and great with ketchup. 'The Classmate is so adorably cozy it make you want to snuggle up on a comfy couch or lean back on some pillows on the floor while you surf. Good thing wireless is built right in. Too bad the typical Linux foibles apply. The first snag was having to log in as root to check the system configuration because the Classmate wouldn't log on to the network. Something tells me most elementary and high school teachers with nothing but Windows experience aren't going to get that.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Below is the comment I posted under the story on linux.com. For those too lazy to read it there:
Five days with three active kids? The fact that you believe that this utterly minor quantity of abuse is significant displays an utter ignorance of the situation in which the systems will be used. And two hours? After which point it must be plugged in? Kids in many if not most of the locations in which the systems will be used will not have access to an electrical outlet. I know this concept is amazing to someone who has never thought about life beyond the borders of the first world...
The ClassmatePC is utterly unsuited to use anywhere outside the rosy, warm and comfortable existence that we in the first world enjoy. I'm sure it makes a very nice toy for your children, however. Be sure to get back to us regarding its durability after they've drug that gigantic (for children) lug of a machine through the dirt on their miles-long walk to and from school every day, mm?
(You can see that I am just as charming in other parts of the web as I am here)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ostensibly the "One Laptop Per Child" thing was meant to provide computing access to underprivileged youths. Now there's competition in the same market and somehow that's bad? If Intel strong-arms the OLPC project into oblivion but continues to provide the same "philanthropic", so to speak, service, don't the children still benefit?
The more I read from and about Negroponte the more his true colors show through.
why? forty-two.
If they feel good competing AGAINST a charity. It's like trying to run the red cross out of town because you want your own select staff of employees to profit from the same line of work.
Why didn't Intel work *with* OLPC to make a laptop to help educate people? Now all they're serving to do is divide the market and confuse customers [re: governments] with a laptop which imho is less suited for the task.
It isn't like OLPC *has* to run a geode. I mean at this point a rework is out of the question, but they could have switched it to an intel chip a couple of years ago if a low power chip was suitable for the task.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"The ClassmatePC is utterly unsuited to use anywhere outside the rosy, warm and comfortable existence that we in the first world enjoy. I'm sure it makes a very nice toy for your children, however. Be sure to get back to us regarding its durability after they've drug that gigantic (for children) lug of a machine through the dirt on their miles-long walk to and from school every day, mm?"
Do third-world children really abuse what they own like that? Or is that the way a first world child would?
It's be pretty sad if there wasn't *some* advantage to the Classmate given the cost, but since low price was the whole point of these machines, any advantage is rather moot.
I learnt to program back in 1978 on a 1MHz Z80 with 1K of RAM and no software other than a monitor program that let me type hex codes into memory. I turned out OK.
If the point of this is to get computers into as many kids hands as possible, where cost was previously a limit, then cost should in essence be the only consideration once any other minimal design goals have been met. Putting in more features (able to run expensive Microsoft bloatware!) for a higher cost would seem to be a detriment to the overall goal rather than a benefit.
The better value-for-money laptop should win. OLPC may be taking too long to get into production.
There are a bunch of false assumptions with this review, not to mention Intel _must_ have put in quite a PR effort to get this story published.
1. The family "just using it."
I think there are enough admins here who understand that the OLPC will probably be delivered pre-configured.
2. So, wireless, much less a steady _Internet connection_ is widely available in developing nations?
The OLPC is getting destroyed quite publicly and there's nothing OLPC can do about it. They've been out-financed.
Today's lesson: Selling to governments without 10's of millions of dollars for bribes of all kinds (including campaign donations)doesn't happen. This is a text book case of what happens to anything innovative (read: new vendors) in government.
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This review makes me angry. Why the hell would you review something as though it were a consumer product for spoiled white kids who have two computers to choose from and who see if their children's version of "second life" works. OLPC is intended for kids who have one extremely endangered life and need to learn basic computer skills. The fact that they had to CALL a tech support place is the sign of Intel's failure. What, are kids in Africa going to walk 30 miles to a pay phone that they can't afford just to be put on hold and deal with call centers in Bangladesh? Are we trying to punish these poor kids?
So since they live in deplorable condition they should be kept ignorant so it propagates to the next generation?
These machines, at least the OLPC, are not designed to be time wasting game platforms. They are meant for education. Rather than have 5-10 paper books to carry around and protect from the elements you will have a small computer and your books will reside on a USB flash drive. You will do your assignments on the machine and zap them to the teacher using the wireless, or a USB drive.
Well, after thinking about it as I wrote this missive, you're right. When they find out they can't plaw WoW on their school property computers, they will throw them in the ditches and drop out of school.
It's long been too expensive to run phone lines all across Africa. However, once the mining companies starting throwing up cell towers, poor people got a hold of used cell phones on their own. Now they are lining up buyers for their crops in the field, instead of harvesting them, trotting them all the way to market, and then letting them rot in the hot sun.
I spent a 10 weeks with a poor indigenous family in Ecuador. They were more or less malnourished -- a 5-year-old looked like a 3-year-old. However, all their kids were in school. They brought home homework that they did in candle light in their open-air thatch-roof plywood-platform 'houses'. Poor people all over the world take incredible advantage of the meager tools they have in front of them. If they can talk to people in far away villages with an OLPC mesh network, they will. They will use it to communicate and improve their lives.
Most people in the world understand that education, whether it's how to hunt monkeys in the canopy, or how to speak English to guide jungle tours. It's only in relatively wealthy countries with enough infrastructure and social programs that people can afford to stay stupid.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
OLPC and this are feel good ideas when too much of this world does have clean drinking water and adequate medicine or food for the day.
So lets not work on anything else until these issues are solved. What are you doing posting on slashdot, you should be out feeding poor children.
What do you say, you have more experience working with computers and would rather work on something you will be more efficient at than food provider. Tough, can't go educating people until everyone on the planet has food.
Intel is NOT interested in providing computing access to underprivileged youths. They are interested in keeping 30Million children from learning to use AMD based devices which htey previously called a 'toy', a 'joke', and 'of little interest to Intel's business'. In short, they are scared they will loose money, and they are correct. Competition in the market is not bad. The practices Intel is employing to kill off a humanitarian effort to protect their bottom line is.
OLPC is a humanitarian project which is trying to provide educational devices to third world countries. These devices are 100% open (open hardware and software) with minimal maintainance. They are designed for the harsh environments and to have minimal environmental impact.
Intel at first dismissed and made fun of the project, then realized that it could be a threat to their business. Instead of developing a better product with humanitarian goals, they created a piece of closed hardware junk with huge environmental impacts. These devices are not designed for third world environments, have a 2 hour battery life, etc, etc, etc. They are being sold well below cost, and Intel is flying all over the world to the governments which approached OLPC and spending millions to sell these devices to them. Not out of a humanitarian effort, but as a business transaction. While on the surface this may seem like competition in an open market, that is just not the case.
OLPC is not a market driven business project. OLPC did not go to governments to sell their program, they announced the program and the governments came to them. In order to provide the devices cheaply, and allow the governments to develop the devices themselves, OLPC needs 3Mil units ordered. They were close to having that before Intel came along and started lobbying only these governments, and offering these junk replacements (internal cost estimate at $400, NOT the $200 under priced value, nor the $50 'introductory' price).
The sole purpose of this is a predatory act to stop an AMD based device from gaining acceptance. This also ignores the software effort. The hardware laptop is only 50% of the OLPC project. The other half is the revolutionary new operating system and GUI being developed as part of OLPC, specifically for child learning. Intel doesn't want to be bothered, because they are not in the business of providing a learning device, they are in the buisness of selling intel chips.
So yes its predatory. VERY predatory, because that is what the computer business is, and that is what Intel is. The stock holders and board members would not have it any other way. OLPC is something completely different, and is being hurt by their actions.
Is this bad for the children? Just look at the two devices, and I think you have your answer.
Oh, to be clear, i have no intention of criticizing the OLPC project. I think it's a great project. My joke was more about the general attempts to "modernize less-developed countries", and the expectations and motivations involved in that process.
As soon as Intel have driven the OLPC out of the market, they will hatch some limp reason why their own product will no longer ship. These piddling margins don't interest the evil that is Intel -- so they'll kill that end of the market in order to preserve their margins up the other end. It's about time we boycotted these bastards.
Windows 2000 needs things like a hard drive, lots of non-volatile storage, and a BIOS. It also costs more than the target price.
Windows 2000 is also designed to be difficult to use and discover: It doesn't include a development environment, a word processor, any wifi support, or introspection tools.
In contrast: the users of the OLPC are encouraged to extend the system, and write software for it, and to share that software.The OLPC can make critical thinkers and sharp engineering minds out of these kids who simply don't have enough engineering challenges in which to learn these things.
Since Windows 2000 - and all other versions of Windows ever lack the ability to engage and challenge its users to make a better system, it certainly cannot answer that call without writing a whole operating system on top of Windows.
I also fail to see how the fact that you might not have to retrain a group of users who aren't even the target audience of the OLPC is a good thing, and since it means giving up all the other things that are good about the OLPC, I can easily see how it is a very bad thing.
You are confusing OEM Windows with Windows. Toshiba went and installed those drivers for you when they installed Windows. If they preinstalled Linux you quite obviously, wouldn't have to install those drivers there, either.
Buying a laptop that works with Retail Windows is very difficult. Most require special drivers just to install it.So don't buy unsupported hardware?
Seriously, if Toshiba made Linux laptops, they'd integrate WIFI hardware that sucked less.FWIW, I've been using Linux as my only desktop operating system since 1994, and the trick is to buy hardware that is supported by Linux.
This isn't that difficult, as Linux has far superiour hardware support over every other operating system, but it means that if you're installing your own operating system, you're doing the job of the integrator, so it's your job to make sure the hardware works.
If you don't want to play integrator, don't: Dell is preloading Ubuntu today, and there are quite a few other OEMs that will sell you Ubuntu preloaded- including laptop makers.
But every time you blame this on Linux, to some you're just making yourself look more and more like a idiot, and to people who know less than you, you're just confusing.
Hate to break it to ya sunshine but *somebody* had to install "two proprietary drivers" on your Windows box too. You didn't have to because THE VENDOR DID IT. Guess what? Those new Ubuntu laptops from Dell? All the hardware in those will work right out of the box - why? Because THE VENDOR DID IT.
/. after all. :D
Want some fun? Get a PC, with a blank hard disk, then try installing Windows on it and see how far you get. I have to do this weekly at our facility. Most occasions a Linux distro (usually SLES/RHEL, occasionally Ubuntu/Debian) installs flawlessly. Often it's the storage controller (either SATA/SAS, U320 RAID and occasionally Fibre Channel) that halts the Windows install in its text-based stage before it's even begun copying files to disk!
Oh, not to mention the number of f**ktard manufacturers out there that make Windows drivers available only in floppy disk images for the machines they make WITH NO FLOPPY DRIVES. Most don't even have an FDD header on the motherboard so take a trip to buy a USB FDD - because Windows can't load drivers at boot time from any other sort of media like CD's or USB keys like Linux can. (This has FINALLY been fixed in Longhorn).
As for WiFi (and a few other gadgets) there are a multitude of postings all over the net of totally lacking driver support in Vista for some devices. The only thing I had to do to get my laptop's (obsure as hell) WiFi card working was follow the instructions provided on the Ubuntu wiki and the whole process took a little over 5 minutes. (Yes, I still found that "scary" - I'm a hardware geek, software is some form of arcane black magic to me). It's the only device that didn't work out of the box and I have to re-do this every time I upgrade the kernel. The fault lays squarely at the feet of the hardware vendor for not making drivers available and not the community who have done a darn fine job of making their own.
If you are waiting to switch because you "still see areas where if it were "...just a little better"..." then I suspect you probably never will, because you will always find some little reason not to.
Sorry if it feels like I'm stomping on your toes. It is
Even putting aside the infrastructure issues, third world countries cannot build these themselves for their citizens. OLPC is giving them the blueprints, hardware and software, to make these for themselves. The XO offerings are a prototype and starter offering, the goal is to have each country providing the hardware and software themselves. It's the proverbial "Teach a man to fish", as opposed to Intel's "Give a man a fish".
http://www.mhall119.com
The review seemed selective, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt. (Having said that, I recently worked for a place that paid the Wall Street Journal to run an "article" for them, so I tend to be more skeptical than I used to be.)
First, if the laptop is aimed at overseas users, is the technical support going to be capable of handling that?
Second, also for overseas use, this will be sent to people who have never seen a computer - big or otherwise - and are probably unfamiliar with the notion of GUIs or possibly even typing. In fact, you can't rely on anything we take for granted being known. Some of it probably will, but you can't know which bits for which people. Is the interface culturally-neutral?
Third, two hours doesn't seem like a lot, when the nearest wall socket in Africa might be several week's walk. Is there an alternative power system? Doesn't matter what - solar cells, power crank, whatever. Without power, it's a lump of plastic-coated spare parts.
Fourth, how is the internationalization? IIRC, Hebrew and Chinese are written right to left - does the typing tutor know this? Are the desktop icons themable to something meaningful in each culture? Did you look to see that the SIL packages and fonts for internationalization were there?
Fifth, you mention wireless issues. But this would likely have been in a home with a wireless access point, or near a metro-provided WAP. This would be pretty useless in a school with no WAP, but only laptops. That would also be useless for mobile populations, where connections between groups will be at indeterminate times and places, but will need to be recognized and supported whenever they exist.
Even in England, you have over a hundred thousand "Travellers" who would benefit from dynamic wireless routing, Mobile IP and NEMO support. Is the wireless support for these sorts of things there?
Lastly, there's the durability. Three kids in a suburban, air-conditioned home is one thing. Whether you are talking about English Travellers, Mexican street kids or Tibetan Sherpas, the climates are more extreme, the stresses are infinitely worse, and the availability of replacements is next to zero.
In the real world, you are looking at external temperatures ranging from -40 to +120. Usually not on the same day, but that can happen. You are looking at shocks that could exceed 6G. Water won't be a spilled glass of coca cola, it's more likely to be monsoon season. The case won't be so much scratched by bumping into a wall as it will be stabbed by the occasional 6' mugger's knife.
When you get into the real-world situations, where "ruggedized" is really pushed to the limits, will this machine really stand up to the punishments it will receive? Or is it merely going to be a way for Intel to pocket some cash, with the customer ending up both financially and intellectually the poorer for it?
All I ask of reviewers, OLPC, Intel or any other person involved is to convince me. Why me, in particular? Because I'm demanding but stay within the limits of what is practical, and am knowledgeable enough to set the limits to what is practical. So can many others - I'm nothing special - it's that I'm posting a set of measurable benchmarks and criteria, and that could theoretically be useful.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I would LOVE to get OLPC for my kids instead of a TI84 silver edition ($120) and required study guide books ($$), etc. I would have saved a lot by NOT having to get each of them a desktop (home built mostly, but still MUCH more than the cost of 3 OLPC) -- and I am in Virginia (CSA) -- which to those of you outside the USA is in the depressed South.
Of course, our taxes are VERY high and the school system is building computer rooms full of shiny new Windows PCs running expensive edu-macation software.
Are there graphing programs equivalent to those on the TI84 available for the OLPC? Of course, you could not bring the OLPC to the SAT or other standardized tests so I guess one would have to purchase at least one TI84.
I think the answer is just to cut a hand off anyone who steals one. Aww yeah.
Seriously though, they can be set to brick themselves, they can easily report their location if they are powered (don't even need to be turned on) and so on.
Also, nobody wants the ClassmatePC. It has two, maybe two and a half hours of battery life. For $200, I can buy an ordinary used laptop that will last that long with probably four times the screen real estate, and a sizable hard disk.
The ClassmatePC is a pile of shit that no one in their right mind would pay more than maybe seventy-five bucks for. But I'd happily pay $200 for the OLPC, and could probably be talked into spending $300 if I knew it would result in the donation of a system to a needy child.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"