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OLPC Cost Rises To $188 Per Laptop
Arathon writes "The amazing '$100 laptop' designed by the 'One Laptop Per Child' program isn't going to make it out the door for that price. CNN reports that the laptops are now expected to cost $188 apiece when they come out later this fall. This is expected to make the program's appeal potentially much smaller, since the developers were relying on the mind-bogglingly low-price to hook governments into the concept of buying laptops for their people. OLPC's spokesman guarantees that the price won't rise further, to 'above $190'. The price differential is being blamed on raw materials costs and currency fluctuation. Is this the end of the OLPC's newsworthiness, or should we continue to hope that it will make the difference that so many have said it will?"
In 6 months it will still be a very useful machine and be a lot cheaper.
-- Cheers!
Come on now. "currency fluctuation" refers to the US dollar sinking.
That's not going to matter in Argintina, Brazil, Nigeria (well maybe there...), and so on.
Yes, $188 is almost twice the $100 original cost. $100 was the goal, right? Even though OLPC didn't make its goal, $188 is still a ridiculously cheap laptop--no other manufacturer can match that (if they could, they'd be making it)--that will be benefiting people throughout the globe.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
It's OLPC's recent goal of being operating system agnostic, rather than linux specific. We know that specially tailored linux distributions can run on very old (and very cheap) hardware, but Windows and OSX can't. If the goal is to be able to run any operating system, then the specs have to be pretty recent, and that means more expensive hardware.
The issue is that OLPC are pressured into running Windows by American and other rich Western schools that like the idea of buying a cheap PC and don't care that much if the price is $100 or $190 as a result.
$90 is 90 days pay for poor people who live on $1 a day. In those countries, the governments will never buy massive numbers of OLPCs, and at $190 a pop they'll even buy a whole lot less of them.
I'm pretty sure that "pay twice the price thing" has no official basis and was just a petition someone started.
Also, while I'm certainly going to snap up an ASUS Eee - it looks like an awesome little subnotebook, especially since laptops that size are usually only available as fancy $2000 machines - I'd also buy an OLPC if I got the chance. Being cheap is about the only thing they have in common.
The ASUS Eee is light and has a tiny screen (even for a subnotebook) and a 3 hour battery life, while the OLPC is a rugged machine with sunlight-readable display and a hand charger.
> Currency "fluctuation", a.k.a. inflation
Currency fluctuation doesn't refer to inflation, but to the low exchange rate for dollar
> may raise this by $5 tops
The dollar has dropped 10% in value compared to second largest currency (the EURO) since the announcement of the OLPC.
"How about 256 flash and 32MB ram"
How much do you think the 1GB flash and 256MB or ram are adding to the cost of this machine? I could buy them (not in bulk) for about $30. Do you honesty think it would be appreciably cheaper to use 256 and 32? It would cost a few dollars less at most (the cost of ram is not proportional to the amount purchased, as ram must be built in modules), and dramatically limit the functionality of the machine.
"One of the nice things with older hardware is that the factories already have everything in place to produce it."
No, in the case of 32MB ram chips, the factories are not set up to produce it at all, because no one uses it. They've all moved on the more modern, cost effective technologies. Moreover the majority of the cost here is coming from the actual cost of assembling the machine. The ram and flash memory are inexpensive.
The price of the OLPC laptop is becoming a recurring subject. I think the price of the laptops is important, but not the most important story to tell. The OLPC laptop has already revolutionized the design of the laptop. On the hardware side we have the extreme power efficiency, the high resolution screen, the cranking mechanism, and last but not least the ergonomic, rugged design. On the software side there is the open firmware, the mesh network, the new user interface, Bitfrost, and probably a few other things I forgot. And all of this is made possible by open source software. The OLPC laptop has set a new standard, and none of the so called competitors from Intel, or other manufacturers comes even close. The competing machines are just cheap standard laptops, with none of the qualities that make the OLPC laptop special. Whatever the price of the laptop, and even if the whole project ultimately fails, the design of the OLPC laptop will have an enormous impact on the future of the PC. And because it is all open souce we can build on its foundations. All of that is much more important than todays price of the hardware.
This has been known for a while. Their plan is to release it now cause they finally decided to go with features rather than cost. It still has a hard drive cranks for when power is unavailable. It has a bunch of design goals that are NOT the same as other cheap laptops. It's meant to be rugged, water resistant, wireless that can span miles to provide (very slow) internet in places that wouldn't otherwise support it.
They already have a bunch of orders for other countries that are buying millions. Their plan is to let the price drop now that hardware is set in stone.
Just have to remember that you're getting a much different machine when buying one of these then buying a 300 dollar computer with monitor.
Plus
These laptops are designed for children, especially in developing countries, not the Starbuck's MySpace/Facebook crowd.
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I believe the thought is that the previous attempts to provide infrastructure, hospitals and contraception have done little to impact the overall situation in Africa.
This attempt attempts to provide access to education and communication, with the thought that a better educated populace that has access to communication and technology would be able to improve their own quality of life.
Kind of like the "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" adage. Plus, giving a community contraception and hospitals are really consumables. Education, once given, can't be taken away.