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Lessons To Learn From The OLPC Project
FixedSpelling writes "Whether you're impressed with it or not, the XO-1 could have a major impact on notebook design. The concept behind the OLPC's development brings outside-the-box thinking and cost-consciousness to a level that we rarely see in portable computing. There are a number of lessons that can be learned the from its unique design and we can already see that some of these concepts have been noticed by manufacturers. 'The biggest attraction to the OLPC project has always been the price of the system. You don't have to be a cynic to understand that the impact of a $100 notebook could be huge and the price has generated the majority of the interest in the project. Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better. The low price was originally important so that the XO-1 could be produced in large quantities without putting too much of a burden on the buyer but the low cost appeals to everyone.'"
I like the crank. If only I could power my laptop, cell phone, etc that way.
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The greatest lesson to be learned from this is that not everyone thinks that a super, ultra, mega, turbo powerful and equally as powerful processor is what they need. It was exactly what i was telling somebody at work today. If you are into playing games, rendering video, editing really hi-res photos, or doing music editing...need a REALLY powerful machine, with a LOT of ram (actually if you are doing any of these as your job, you should probably be using a mac). However, if you are like me, and your laptop is more or less a thin client that connects to other machines via either Remote Desktop or SSH, then the cheapest, most durable, lightest, and most efficient laptop is EXACTLY what you need.
If I could buy a pallet of these things and run rdesktop and OpenVPN on them, half of my users would be using them from home.
hell, $100 bucks is cheaper than my friggin blackberry! and i bet it doesn't get confused when you throw anything but txt based email at it!
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It's a pretty safe assumption that all of slashdot readers know what OLPC means. This is after all news site for geeks at heart and it's not the 1st time we've heard about it here. If you fail to understand it, just read the article is that too much to ask?
If I want RIAA, ISP, RAM, OLPC, etc. to be spelled out for me I'd go read news sites geared toward the general public.
Laser printers print at 600dpi and above, but you don't need a magnifying glass to read the output. The point is that the size of a character on-screen should not depend on the dpi of the display. If the GUI is properly designed, the fonts will be large enough and the high pixel density will allow the fonts to be smoother.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
Most people use the web, send email, and word process. I know it's common in Slashdot to talk about your week-long 3D rendering sessions, but the number of people who do that is extremely small. Seriously, I spent some years visiting houses and fixing computers and maybe one person in all those people did stuff with video. I told him to upgrade his RAM from 256 to 512. The point is that one of these basic laptops is ideal for what people really do with their computers, and hardware bloat is just as serious as software bloat (because it makes irrational demands on batteries and heat disposal). Hell, 99% of what I do with a PC can be done on an OLPC. On a related note, Vista was created mostly to give Americans a distorted picture of the hardware they needed to live out their pathetic computational lives, lives that would be satisfied on a Pentium MMX running Windows 98.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
I have now seen a load of comments along the lines of "you can get a cheap Walmart laptop for $400" and it's so much better.
No, it is not better. It does have more RAM, a faster CPU and a larger disk. However, it does not have a 24 hour battery life, the ability to run without a mains supply, a rugged design that will allow it to last a long time in a tough environment or a screen which will work in direct sunlight. It also doesn't generare oits of heat, so it doesn't need one of those awful laptop CPU fans which are so unreliable on low end machines.
So yeah, you get lower speed specs, but you get other much higher specs instead. And it's still 1/4 of the price or 1/3 or whatever the price ends up being.
So, no that $400 Dell is not even nearly equivalent. Come to think of it that $4000 Dell isn't equivalent either. Something with that portability, ruggedness and battery life would be vastly more useful to a lot of people than a high end, high power, fragile and very expensive computer.
Remember, a computer is more than just the CPU speed.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I do not get this "apps as services" dream so many have. At all.
I like being able to write a school report on the bus home at weekends. I like being able to mess with my photos at my parent's rural house which only has dial-up. I like having tens of useful little apps locally, just for when I need them. I like not being beholden to some companies server for access to vital data, and I'm sure many here agree with me - for every program that uses an open standard, 2 more use their own. At least now if Apple stops making Pages, I can export to txt, or docx, or whatever I need to keep working. Some server goes down? Then perhaps I get notice, export to another format. Maybe I can't, or maybe the crash happens at an inopportune time - "Sorry that you need to finish your presentation today, we'll be back up soon"...
For a look at how people react to software as a service. Apple releases iPhone, all non-standard apps as services. Internet goes crazy, hacks emerge, major sites lambast Apple for screwing customers. And this was a phone! Can you imagine if someone releases a laptop that needs a net connection to ensure basic functionality!
Finally the bandwidth costs would surely destroy a whole lot of popular non-commercial programs. Think to who promotes this idea at all - big companies like Microsoft, Adobe. They can afford (and charge for) online apps. The GIMP? OpenOffice? How long would donations keep these projects alive if people were constantly streaming data from their sites?
So, if local applications, with no latency, fast HD access, and true control of my data are "for the left-behinds", then consider me left behind, and happy with it.
I've seen very few textbooks released in e-book format; most of the ones I have seen were in very specialized subjects and released under the GNU FDL.
Do you live in the Third World? They are most useful there, however they are used elsewhere. U Penn list more than 25,000 e-books. The University of Texas lists more. Those are just the first 2 results of a Google of e-books "text books", which lists almost 25,000 results. Of the XO ZDNet" has this to say:
"Assuming this device can survive its harsh environment and continue to function over a period of a half-dozen or more years (still a stretch, in my estimation), a single lightweight (but rugged) device, could easily outlast 100 textbooks in a hot and humid environment. And, by any measure, a $100 laptop equipped with 100 electronic textbooks could be worth its weight in gold in such a third-world setting."
FalconShould there be a Law?