Slashdot Mirror
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.
It's okay, it's 188 USD, not 188 in some highly valued currency.
Be relentless!
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)
Hehe, do you realize how deliciously ironic your post is.
And that machine I link to is actually better than the OLPC. And will sell for the same price to everyone (you'll need to pay 2x or 3x the OLPC price to get it yourself). And can run Windows (XP and less) if need be.
In fact, what OLPC proved is, that commercial entities are already doing their best. Negroponte ranted left and right how the greedy vendors could make a cheap PC but couldn't, but now his dream is vaporware and he's arrived at a pretty pedestrian sublaptop, that has its analog for the same price with the good ol' commercial vendors.
0.532 Laptops Per Child
> 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.
> "...deliciously ironic..."
:D
(1) The ASUS Eee PC is priced at $249. That is 30%+ more expensive than the OLPC XO-1.
(2) The ASUS Eee PC *only* *exists* because Intel hates the AMD-based OLPC project. Intel created and funded a competitive reference platform, the Classmate PC, and this forms the basis for the Eee PC.
Of course, the OLPC is a non-profit social welfare program that actually achieves its goals when it forces Intel to dramatically drop prices and cut zero-profit deals with the likes of, say, Pakistan.
This is not irony. This is *accomplishment*.
And yes, I'll be buying an Eee, and thanking *Negroponte* -- not Intel -- for making it happen.
ASUS=Taiwan. Where do you think the OLPC will be made? Taiwan--just like everything else! The manufacturer makes just about every other damned laptop, too. So, how, precisely, do you believe inflation of the U.S. dollar (currently 2.5%) is strongly related to third party prices from a foreign manufacturer, who is in an country with an inflation rate one fifth of that of the US? Put the facts where your mouth is.
Secondly, contrary to what you're blathering on about earlier, the ASUS EEE and the OLPC are hardly comparable. They don't target the same users or market. The OLPC is designed to be eminently durable (it's well sealed against dust and water), to last a long time on battery (it gets 2000mAh more than the OLPC to get 3 hours run time vs 5+ the OLPC offers), it has a monitor that's better suited to reading textbook style information on the computer, and is designed to have incredible wireless range, so it can serve as a mesh network node. And the ASUS recently became more expensive-$199 to $250.
You need to learn that "better" is a subjective metric when you're comparing stuff like this. Is a Cray faster at computing stuff than the computer on your desk? Absolutely--but that doesn't mean that a Cray makes a good desktop machine, any more than a desktop makes a good super computer. Each is completely unfit for the other's job. Apple and oranges.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Apple should release a $200 iPod touch with increased functionality and reduced specs for children in third world countries. It could easily compete with OLPC at that price.
Isn't that kind of heavy for a laptop?
Oh wait... Never mind.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
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.
Sure, a Western adult would prefer an Eee - I can't wait to test drive one myself. But you omit a few other differences that demonstrate why OLPC is better for their target market - children in developing nations.
Eee networking - conventional wifi-to-Internet
OLPC networking - mesh ad hoc OR wifi-to-Internet
Eee screen - conventional indoor only
OLPC screen - unique dual-mode, clearly readable even in bright sunlight
Eee hardware - conventional non-rugged Western office / home environment; requires stable AC power
OLPC hardware - sealed against elements, child-tolerant; runs on AC power, hand or foot power, solar cell
Eee software - conventional Linux
OLPC software - highly customized for non-computer-literate children
Eee development - requires conventional developer tools; system restore requires external media
OLPC development - "show source" button allows children to explore and modify most aspects of the environment with nothing more than the built-in Python editor; and versioned filesystem ensures machine can be rolled all the way back to original state with no external media support
The OLPC is very unconventional, and is much better suited to children in developing classrooms than any other machine on the market. *That* is what makes it special, not an arbitrarily low price point.
Let's be economically realistic here. If you look at the OLPC progress timescale here:
http://laptop.org/en/vision/progress/index.shtml
You will notice that the price tag of 100$ per laptop initiates back in the end of 2004.
Now, I hope all of you here have heard about an economic phenomenon called inflation - the process where governments inflate money supply making your dollars buy less. Very few know that for the past decade or so the government has been massaging the official inflation numbers to make them appear lower - this allows them to make fewer and fewer payments on inflation adjusted liabilities such as social security. However, they still publish all the numbers one needs to calculate the actual inflation, and some people have been doing that, look for example here:
http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data
Notice how inflation has been running steadily at about 10% for the last few years. Today, the engineers who drafted the 100$ plan in the end of 2004 / beginning of 2005, should expect the cost to be 100*1.1*1.1*1.1 or roughly 135 dollars.
That already would take a lot of sensationalism out of the story. However, let's not stop here. Remember, the real culprit behind inflation is the money supply, and consumer inflation is usually the latest to price rising party. The money supply (as you may have noticed from previous link) has been running at 14% annually, causing serious mischief in prices of things like energy (http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/energy/index.htm) or metals (http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/metals/welcome_to_the_page_about_copper_futures.htm) - both are important for making technology.
Just for the sake of an example, let's trivialize the problem a little, and say that to make a laptop you need to spend 60% of your budget on metals, and 40% on energy (it's wrong, but I am just making an example). What would you expect to happen to the price of such laptop according the charts I linked to? Well, it would go up from 100$ to slightly over 200$.
So what is the real story here, engineers screwing up their designs, or governments inflating away the buying power of the dollar making the same thing cost twice more over 3 years?
Look at my links, do your research, decide for yourself.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"