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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.'"
wtf is an olpc?
I like the crank. If only I could power my laptop, cell phone, etc that way.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
And then used the money to lower the price. Not something I would personally do, but seems like a popular fad.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
... and when will they be available for sale in the US?
"Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently" By what percent of notebook users? This does not happen all the time in my universe. Unsupported generalizations in a submission make me want to mod the whole thread down.
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!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
That due to the economics of inflation a $100 laptop really costs $200.
What I want is a laptop powered by wanking.
It could use the energy from the wanking to power the laptop.
The faster the user wanks, the brighter the porn is.
If you stop wanking, a picture of Richard M. Stallman nude comes up to warn you that the battery will die in fifteen seconds.
Do you think we could get the OLPC to help build this?
Wouldn't you rather pay $2,000 to have your $100 laptop sent to a special clean room facility to recover the data?
What I love the most about the OLPC is the key that lets you show the source code (in python!) of the app in use. Which you can modify. and if you mess it up, revert. I'm astonished to see this concept from smalltalk and Alan Kay live on. It couldn't be a better idea. We were having a discussion in a strategy session at my daughters' small montessori school (which goes thru 6th grade), where we were bemoaning the lack of imaginative uses of technology in the classrooms. Beyond a student-produced newsletter and using word processors to write reports... nothing. Nobody seems to know what to do. But the OLPC is taking the lead in saying kids can and should be allowed to do so much more - the mere fact that here you are given a facility to modify your complex tools should be revolutionary.
must... stay... awake...
If it's too cheap to be true, it probably is.
I am with Linus on this one. For the life of me I can't understand what this sucking up to RMS is about. Linus himself does not think GPLv3 is a good thing. So why do people keep adopting it.
Without Linus FOSS is tossed. Not following Linus is dangerous for the survival of FOSS.
I'm seriously thinking about it. It's possible that the machine will be so nice that I'll use it for my regular light duty stuff (email and basic surfing). Given the current state of the Internet, I actually feel like it's less likely that the donated machine will help the target kid, but it's supposed to be the thought that counts, eh?
However, I wish the twofer offer had a provision for donating the second machine if it's too far from tolerable for my uses. I can afford to donate the 400 bucks to charity...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
"Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better."
They also represent a dieing phase of mobile-hardware evolution.
By the time OLPC positives coalesce, apps & data for the masses will all be ubiquitously net-available, meaning anything more than a terminal will be/is outdated.
Of course, the OLPC is still a viable tool for the left-behinds.
I think that they are on to something with OLPC. But, maybe ahead of their time. I'm sort of in the Clifford Stoll school of camp regarding computers in the classroom for pre-teens.
To me, sounds like they just went with tech-jargon-BS and said that the computer is the best way to move to a better education. If all the money they spent, and want to spend, on 3rd-world education went to just.. um... BOOKS, then they would have probably accomplished twice their goal by now.
They seem simply to be wanting to make a "point" with the OLPC. The fact that 3rd world countries look at it economically/socially and reject it makes them go to the "make the 1st-world-feel-better-by-donating" attitude. Still wrong. When you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging. The 3rd-world does not want steal-able OLPC's at a subsidized rate. They want food and books and teachers. Let's not jump ahead of frickin' simple Sociology 101.
Moe
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Were the day glow green color and, in the original specs, the hand crank. I wanted to take notes on my bright green notebook during one of those interminable sales demos, then right in the middle plug in my hand crank and charge up my laptop. Sorry, just charging up, go right on.
Then they took the hand crank out of the design and my whole sales demo interrupt fantasy just fell apart. But by that time I was already hooked on the idea of cheap laptop with built-in mesh networking.
I think I'd use the less powerful and more portable laptop more than a power brick that costs $3,000.00. If it linked in to my desktop when in range, all the better.
Too bad about the hand crank, though.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I may just be pulling the exact number out of my ass, but I thought it stopped being the $100 laptop and became the $175 laptop a while ago. Why are people still calling it the $100 laptop?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/15/100-olpc-xo-1-to-cost-at-least-188-over-200-in-uruguay/
so i guess that the moral of the story isn't to cook up such stupid ideas, put a price tag on it and THEN try make the project fit the price tag. it's poor managment if i ever saw it.
things cost as much as they are going to cost. I can annouce the $100 aeroplan with 100% first class seating for all, but it's still going to cost more then $100 no matter how much i wish otherwise.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You might like some of the stuff these guys make, including a universal human powered charger for small gadgets. We have a couple of their things, the original crank and spring (clockwork) powered multiband radio, and a later, crank to generator model, excellent build quality there. The OLPC guys are still contemplating going with their foot pedal push generator thing, along with the yo yo string puller last I heard.
_If_ the notebook was really $100 then maybe I wouldn't be so cynical.
The only way to get one of these in the US is to participate in the Give One Get One program, where you buy 2 and give one away to help a child that would otherwise not receive an XO. It's a noble cause, but now you've upped the price for one (to the general public) from $100 to $400. We're still very far away from the realization of a $100 notebook, in my opinion.
See one of these XO notebooks next to a common Dell laptop. They are extremely smaller in size:
http://flickr.com/photos/barl0w/1101266148/
From http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home
OLPC espouses five core principles: (1) child ownership; (2) low ages; (3) saturation; (4) connection; and ***(5) free and open source.***
Someone else can run with option 5, to make an equivalent, for adults laptop. Depending on performance, we may finally see a machine mass-produced, showing acceptable speed and avertising that it's doing so despite "under-powered" hardware.
If this was mass-produced, people would finally have reason to question: why do I need this super-great/expensive machine for the latest OS? Sure we have plenty of tiny OSes out there, Puppy Linux, D*** Small Linux and various others from scratch. The problem is the same that kept Linux from the spotlight... it's not pre-installed on PCs sitting on store shelves.
(Sure the above efficiency question is asked frequently from one version of Windows to the next, but default installs of Linux flavors trying to be mainstream-ready are a bit slow on older hardware as well.)
I can't wait to see the results on the marketplace...
What's needed are some standard laptop cases, so components of standard sizes can be used to build systems. Use something like a PC-104 design with flat connectors, so you can choose whether to add a more powerful graphics card or something else. Have a DVD drive sized area where you can choose whether you need a DVD drive, more hard drives, more batteries. There obviously will be a need for several different sizes due to various portability-vs-power needs, but there can be more flexibility for machines...and more competition.
shall we? OK! to make suRe 7he posts. Due to the which don't use the
I've had the notebook that I'm typing on right now for about 5 years. The battery's shot, but the power supply works (though patchworked with new wires) and the laptop itself still works fine. Sure, 500mhz won't play many games, but it works fine for going online.
I also have my other laptop from the late '90s. I've never lost or broke a laptop. So in my experience, it's 0% lost or broken.
"Your experience is statistically insignificant" - mutant from cut Futurama scene.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better.
No. The more reason to drop the laptop fetish. Laptops absolutely have their appropriate uses- but desktops work just fine for a huge percentage of people. Their components are cheaper, more easily replaced, and usually superior in performance. Nevermind that forcing you to sit in front of the computer, as opposed to being available to you in bed, on your couch, on your porch, etc- means you're more prone to wasting more time on the internet.
Yet...very few people I know will even consider a desktop. It drives me insane in business settings- I can do all manner of repairs and data recovery very, very easily on a desktop. Laptops are a total mixed bag ranging from "the company will have a tech here tomorrow morning" to "ARRRRG its going to take an hour to get the damn thing apart."
Thinkpads and Dells are the best, from my experience; HP sells a lot of consumer-ish crap. Apple gets a failing grade in almost every regard; iBooks, Powerbooks, and Macbook Pros are MISERABLE to disassemble for hard drive replacement. iBooks require damn near COMPLETE disassembly to get to the drive. The only plus is firewire target disk mode, but that is near useless in case of hardware failure.
Please help metamoderate.
I find it ironic that the OLPC project is always regarded with such high praise, while any mention of a school district investing in laptops is always met with disdain and remarks such as "why does a kid need a laptop anyway?
More and more colleges are requiring laptops. Some even require a specific brand or model with a specific OS, usually Windows. Some colleges include a laptop in the tuition, others require students to get one themselves.
FalconShould there be a Law?
My local LUG is having a large conference tomorrow, where one of the highlights is an introduction to programming on the OLPC.
At least in Argentina, where a deployment is being scheduled, the entire Free Software community has the hots for this. Whether it succeeds or not as en educational tool, it's pioneering a new paradigm of computing; the truly small, truly cheap, truly rugged laptop.
Here's something that might interest those who are thinking about the $400 two-fer, but want to play with XO first...
You can emulate most of it with qemu or vmware. It's easy.
See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO/Quick_Start
Seemed a pretty sluggish on my wimpy Core Duo 1.66, but lots of that may be due to a lack of hardware accelerated video in qemu.
Anyhow, check it out. Good times.
(It does seem odd to use Python as the primary language on a slow CPU with little memory, but it seems to work okay...)
I call bullshit.
First, if you go about recommending peoeple build their game rigs around macs, I hope they have the sense to tell you you're talking shit. Video editing - maybe, and picassa looks exactly the same on windows and mac, which is what most people nowadays are happy to use rather than face Photoshop's steep learning-curve and/or price.
Second, I too am a sysadmin, and I too use my lappie for things that can be done by a 700MHz P3 like RDP and SSH.
HOWEVER, and this is where you're off the mark by a mile, the big difference between a P3 and the L7500 Core2Duo I'm writing this on now is the fact that the latter consumes WAY LESS power, and offers me insane (by P3 standards) battery life (Thinkpad X60t, before you ask).
Your computer needs don't sum up with the CPU&GPU either. Last year I was laptopless and cashless for a while, and borrowed a Dell lappie from work for several months. Let me tell you something. You won't get work done on 800x600, and my recent move to an SXGA+ (1400*1050) screen DID make a hell of a lot of difference in my ability to get shit done. These won't come standard on Asus EeePC, nor will you find them on entry-level laptop machines.
You're right in that CPU SPEED is not a factor. You're wrong that for someone who wants to do non-CPU-intensive stuff like office work or internet browsing needs the dirt-cheapest lappie he can find. His parameters are different, yes, but they're not non-existent.
And I haven't even mentioned a word about *carrying* (for those that actually take their machine with them) around a frigging battle cruiser, which is what cheap typically amounts to.
-
The wireless mesh networking capability will be awesome! I'm in the US, if all my neighbors had wireless mesh networking, low power, and open then there would always be a network connection available. It would also be free. The users would create their own internet.
Could probably sell thousands per year as rugged, portable laptops for field service techs.
Why are they using x86? ARM or SHx are both much more power efficient, work with linux (and get more done per clock cycle). Did AMD give them a good deal on low end chips they couldn't get rid of?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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
Macbook Pros are MISERABLE to disassemble for hard drive replacement.
Translation: you've never actually seen one.
Like it or not Slashdot has become the online advertising campaign for the OLPC scam. Now it is a $175 laptop and don't forget we ALREADY had $175 computers, they are called Pocket PCs and already contain many thousands of learning applications like ePocrates. Lets total that up: OLPC Laptop: $175 Power Supply: $50 Carrying case: $29 Broadband Connection: $480/yr. Avg Repairs over 3 years: $58 Extra software that cost money: $100-$500 Music Downloads: $100/yr Porn/Malware Blockers: $30/yr. External Hard Disk: $50 Obviously, a regular laptop is actually cheaper: Recent price at Dell.com $399 with rebate, includes battery, power supply and for $39 a carrying case. Now here is the real killer: MANY companies are poised ready eat the $200 cost of producing a similar unit in exchange for a monthly service charge like a cell phone for stuff like you know updates, support, repairs, etc. They are just waiting for the market to materialize from the vaporware state. So exactly how do you turn Slashdot into your personal advertising campaign, I have many ideas I need to sell as well???
But now it is suppose to be using a pull string.
"Go right ahead sir, I'm just charging my computer", as you stand
up and pretend to be pull starting a chainsaw.
or tie a little handle on the end of it and pretend you are at
the gym during the sales pitch.
I think there is still hope for this machine
No. The more reason to drop the laptop fetish. Laptops absolutely have their appropriate uses- but desktops work just fine for a huge percentage of people. Their components are cheaper, more easily replaced, and usually superior in performance. Nevermind that forcing you to sit in front of the computer, as opposed to being available to you in bed, on your couch, on your porch, etc- means you're more prone to wasting more time on the internet.
I used think along those lines before I got my first Thinkpad. While I still sit and work at a proper desk, I prefer doing everything possible on the laptop. The keyboard is better, no reaching for the mouse (for the click-and-point stuff), the noise doesn't get any lower, and the compact size allows me to to use my desk for "real-world" things, not to mention I can look out the window without having to turn my head. And, if needed, I can get up and take it elsewhere.
I think your objections have everything to do with the cost and engineering involved in making something so small so that it can function like a larger machine -- higher priced parts makes for higher price replacement parts, for example. That people tend more and more to prefer laptops (for whatever reason) should be expected. As for the goals of the OLPC project, the traditional desktop/keyboard/monitor approach is out of the question.
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.
It's interesting to note that the XO is diskless. The idea of putting the OS on a solid state device is catching on. If the XO allowed a USB-like boot, I think that would be even more useful. A number of distros support just this type of boot (see for example http://www.mandriva.com/ or http://www.faunos.com/ ). Here's an article from the second of those distros that argues why its useful for the user to be able to physically detach the memory device (USB) from the rest of the computing hardware: http://www.faunos.com/articles/article-01.html
I've been complaining about the name for a while now.
The purpose of the project is to change the learning model of disadvantaged children via novel purpose-built and Free software and revolutionary hardware (mesh computing, heaps of work done on the power side of things).
So then they call it "one laptop per child" and the tech media starts comparing it to PC laptops that people use for entirely different purposes. The casual observer / tech writer goes "laptops... like word processing and games and stuff? 3rd world children don't need that, they need food and infrastructure!".
Also it's been tagged "the $100 laptop", which once again causes people to compare it to consumer laptops and start whining when the price estimate changes.
So yeah - almost all of the writing I read about this wonderful technology Completely Misses The Point, stemming from a terrible choice of name.
I agree with all your other points. However, here are additional things I find wrong with laptops:
- battery life
- fragile
- they get really freakin hot
- any external peripherals are a pain
- easily stolen or lost
My laptop has its uses, but it's not my "base". It's not my workstation where I keep all of my "important documents". It's definitely not as comfortable or ergonomic as a natural keyboard at a proper desk, and I'm not going to kill my eyesight looking at a small screen all the time.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
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?
First off, i'm pretty sure the mac mafia gave you the troll score for suggesting that OSX is less than the best gaming platform out there.
Now, about your arguments: there is a huge shift underway in portable computing. For $400 you're no longer stuck with a coal-burning, memory-poor load of bricks. So my current configuration features a Core 2 duo desktop with a pair of flat panels; it cost far more than $400, but I use it for all kinds of "heavy lifting". For the rest, I have my n800(just over $400 with memory and keyboard). It's still rough around the edges, but it gets the job done: I check mail, slashdot, listen to music, walk around the house talking on VoIP, and not have to worry about battery life. My second device doesn't need to replace my first. In fact, it's more useful to me if it doesn't.
Your post exemplifies the old thinking on portable computing: power, size, low price: pick one, and suffer the others. Now we're starting to see machines that can give you the last two in exchange for small screens and modest processors. Hey, if you're not running Windows, you can get by with a lot less.
The obvious choice is ... well ... obvious, and I'm sure it would bring the sales pitch to a 'grinding' halt if you did start cranking ;)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
I love this video for how good it shows how little has actually changed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxbstn2IZM
Sure that one doesn't cover web usage, but without stupid Flash it would probably do decent in that area aswell.. Some more ram usage and so on is ok but the current rate and state are ridiculous.
I've used claris works on mac classics and LC IIs myself and I prefered it to works on win 3.11 on the 386s, and for most peoples use it would be sufficient today aswell..
Just about anything you keep on a shared server is liable to discovery and use in all sorts of law suits. Particularly in law suits between your service provider and others. This can get you into all sorts of legal problems; for example ripping a CD is legal, but ripping it and storing it on someone else's machine is not. Nasty comments you make about others will be private opinions in your own diary and libel if published. Keeping data on other people's systems is something you should be really careful about it.
A few bad lawsuits and the whole web applications for personal use industry may go down completely.
When I go into work, the first thing that I do is move the keyboard and monitor of my much more capable desktop out of the way, so that I have room for my small laptop. Curiously, the small keyboard of the laptop has turned out to be much more ergonomic than a full-sized desktop keyboard, and I can get a much better working position with the laptop than with the unnatural fixed position forced by the hulking desktop. Indeed, before I got the laptop I had suffered from severe tendonitis in my wrists for many years, and this vanished as soon as I moved to the laptop, and hasn't come back. The argument about heat is also bogus, as far as I am concerned, and related to the fact that most people buy the biggest, overpowered laptop that they can find, and then complain that it gets hot. I bought a late Pentium M laptop last year, and it runs cool all of the time, without the fan coming on most of the time, because unless I am running something heavy, the CPU automatically throttles down from 1.9GHz to just 800MHz. Returning to the slashdot article, of course the OLPC won't ever get hot if it only consumes 2W.
If these laptops are so cheap, and available to everyone, people won't mind buying them in massive amounts.
This will generate a huge heap of trash.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Having a black-white high DPI mode, readable outside, is quite a useful innovative feature, in my book, with the low power consumption the laptop can be used as an e-book reader.
I wonder if laptops makers will license the display and scale it to 14" to sell in regular laptops? Probably not though as they're doing very little innovation.
Of course having a great product is not enough to be a great success..
So the biggest problem with it is this: kids in the third world don't have a lot and the concept of sharing is widely-practiced - ONE LAPTOP PER CLASS is plenty! Why OLPC is intent on giving EVERY child a laptop is indeed, very misguided and just reflects US consumerist values.
www.itjerk.com
Please try to pay attention...
No sig today...
Please try to keep up with the project.
No sig today...
The point of the laptop ISN'T to teach about computers.
The XO is meant to replace textbooks. The $100 came from a printing estimate for textbooks over five years, not some grand marketing scheme, and they will hit that, and cheaper, over time. It's also to be more interactive than, say, a text book or even a chalkboard.
The Etoys interface is meant to allow kids to model things like gravity, ecosystems, inclined planes and so on, without needing a lot of adult intervention.
The guys involved have devoted substantial portions of their lives to education. But every genius on Slashdot figures they could do the project better after reading an article. (And probably not even all of that.) And certainly not bothering to read the OLPC website which addresses the issues that come up here time and time again, including the "send them used equipment"
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_mission
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_technology
20 years ago I saw some strange people talking into these things the size of breezeblocks anw we all thought it was just perverse.
We have call-boxes and phones in houses.
Now the current generation genuinely think differently
When they call someone they automatically call that persons mobile
when they buy a house they do not have a landline, they have broadband
when they go out they do not meet at the kings head at 9 and stay there, they meet in the west end at some approximate time and move about. They do not necessarially need to be physically there, some will participate via text and if you ask later you will be told that X was there that night even if he/she was not physically there
There are many similarities between desktops and fixed-base phones :- why do I need to do use it here at this specific desk in this building? Why is the storage in this PC? Why are the apps there and not where I am?
Citrix/ Thin Clients/ NAS/ Sans are all things that move us towards the place where the desktop no longer exists, the resource is where I am, wherever I am.
This means laptops - and if I am paying, cheap ones.
It's $399, and for that kind of money I can buy a crappy-ass DELL that at least works.
You're judging a computer solely based upon how easy it is to disassemble?
I think you need to step back, and remember that IT works for the company. The company does not work for the IT department. If the boss wants the laptop, then he's damn well going to get a laptop. Unless you have a better excuse than "It occasionally makes my job a pain", he's got the upper hand.
I will agree that Thinkpads are very nice. With a few minor exceptions, they're easy to disassemble. They're ridiculously durable, and generally tend to be pretty reliable. All this comes at a cost of course, and Thinkpads tend to be hellishly expensive, especially if you want something particularly fast or lightweight.
Apple's got the laptop thing figured out pretty well. Their machines are generally fitted with the Intel's top-of-the-line-without-being-extravagant chips, have decent specs, are lightweight and durable (even on the low-end models), and are really quite inexpensive when you consider the value for the money. They seem to have addressed the hard-drive replacement concerns, and the drives on the new MacBooks are much easier to access (I'll agree that the older iBooks were indeed awful to disassemble).
But Dell..... Dell's laptops have been awful for a few years now. For the most part, they haven't significantly evolved past the C-Series chassis that they were using since the 90s. Pick up a dell laptop with one hand -- it'll weigh 6 pounds, feel flimsy, and in many cases, you'll actually hear the chassis start to creak and bend. Now do the same with a Thinkpad or MacBook. Now, decide which of the three is least likely to survive being dropped from 4 feet up.
I suppose that the ability to remove the hard drive, and also completely break the machine apart into a million pieces with minimal effort could be considered a selling point, but it's not very high up on my list.
There was a point in time when the expandability of an ATX desktop was considerably superior to a laptop or a proprietary desktop. Considering that technology has become relatively stable, along with the advent of USB and Firewire, the need for an expandable system is pretty much negated. Unless you count gamers, and anyone else who has the serious need to do massive amounts of number-crunching, most people are adequately served by a laptop.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Nice article. Overall a pretty good summary of the new features of the OLPC laptop. One feature however is missing (and missing from most stories about the OLPC laptop), and that is the collaboration model and the corresponding user interface. Probably we are so used to the clunky ways we do collaboration on our PC's that we completely mis the revolutionary aspects of this new sharing model and the user interface that makes sharing the easiest thing in the world to do. It is build into the software, just a mouse click to share your document with your friends (visualized on the screen). No big iron groupware servers, just one mechanism for sharing instead of the dozens of primitive and incompatible methods we use now. I hope that this aspect of the laptop will get more attention. And maybe the open source community cab develop this in to a new killer app for Linux.
This laptop isn't just a computer, is also acts as a book. Unless you change 'One Laptop Per Child' to 'One laptop per child and a projector and a serious source of power' this is not going to work.
It's very likely it'll be one laptop per 2 or 3 children in reality, because those nations *are* that poor, but that's still cheaper and more flexible than books. I prefer books to read, but they're a precious and costly resource. With the laptops there is much more flexibility in delivering content.
BTW, there IS a problem with OLPC but it's less obvious. Approx 60% of kids have eye deficiencies and require glasses to read. Someone in the Netherlands has sorted that problem but I'm going to see how I can help them get that to the market (to set up production costs more than the glasses - it's a fantastically clever idea).
Staw poll: would you agree to buy a set of glasses if it means 4 kids in those countries could get one for free? If so, what would you be prepared to pay for them (they look cool, by the way, but I can't tell you more than that yet).
Insert
Reminds me of the Nicklaus Wirth work years ago when his group was designing 50 W workstations.
to hold and make operational a computer that is far less powerful than any lapop being built today, including the OLPC.
Tomorrow you will have throw away laptops. just as today you have throw away calculators.
The point is, with or without the OLPC and competitive efforts along the same line, $100 laptops and even sub $100 laptops will happen.
The question is timing. When they do happen will it be to help fill a poor countries needs or post poor?
To me poor is qualified as having need of something more vital to survival such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine, basic education, etc... then it is to spend it on a computer.
And when the income raises enough to buy such a computer, how is what such a computer is capable of, going to benefit someone living in such a poor environment.
Just at what level of poor does such a computer become viable to have?
Before that level is reached I can understand having a common share of computers, such as like books recycled in a class room, own by the school...? etc...
One unfortunate lesson that the OLPC team should have learned is that you shouldn't promise a $100 laptop unless you're sure that you can DELIVER a $100 laptop. Now that it costs twice as much as originally promised, many of the third world countries who were wanted to buy OLPC's aren't interested anymore and are looking at alternatives from other hardware manufacturers.
I know that's a tough lesson to learn, but it is the unfortunate truth.
mod parent up
The equivalent of an Asus EEE running DR-DOS, a pimped GEOS, WordPro, Lotus 123, PINE and some ancient version of Corel Draw will do 90% of your standard desktop work at a speed one hasn't even dreamed of. It's because nowadays we run upwards of 5-7 extreme performance hogs at a time on regular PCs today without even thinking twice about it. Decoding MP3s, millions of desktop colors, workplace shells chewing so much RAM and CPU it's insane, running huge apps on top of Java, Mozilla/XUL, .Net or toolkits of simular performance impact, with the odd webserver, database and somewhere around three net-applets (Mail, PIM, Newsreader, Browser) idling in the background. The ease at which we switch around between 10-20 pratically redundant application stacks running at a time is payed for by throwing huge amounts of computing power at them. Optimze that even slightly and you'll have a huge impact on what a work enviroment needs.
... There really is no need to do that, but we like it that way. Thus anything slower than 800Mhz often is out of discussion.
It's just that today we expect a comp to idle an active mp3 player while running Firefox showing a Flash Video in 600x300 at 25fps. With Eclipse and OpenOffice open in the background. All powered by 32bit Aqua or an MS rippoff.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think you need to step back, and remember that IT works for the company. The company does not work for the IT department.
You need to stop lecturing people with more IT experience than you, kid. We don't just sit around waiting for your beck and call; we've got shit to do, too. Our time costs the company just like your time does. Furthermore, time spent fixing your laptop that could have been avoided with giving you a desktop, means we couldn't spend time on other things that could have helped the company make money. We Big Boys refer to that sort of thing as 'opportunity cost'.
Second: everything about laptops are more expensive for employers. They're far more easily damaged (and the resulting lost employee productivity waiting for it to be fixed, time devoted to it by IT staff, etc.), less upgradeable (which means it isn't as useful as a capital expenditure), much more easily stolen (and the resulting loss of trade secrets, lost employee productivity, etc.)
A good chunk of the people who claim they need a laptop to 'do work at home' don't do a drop of work at home...it's just so they get a nice 'home computer' out of their employer.
Please help metamoderate.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
That's assuming the C64 was powerful enough to handle the networking facilities, which it probably isn't. Shifting the processing burden onto the networking hardware might solve the problem... and it would significantly increase the cost. Let's see your "$90" C64 PC then. but it did include the hand crank, as the DTV (C64) runs off of 4 AA batteries. Yes, and I can buy a little dinky toy with an old-school monochrome LED toy that meets the technical definition of a "computer" which probably requires even less power. The fact that it would be woefully underpowered for the intended use seems to be irrelevant to this discussion.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better."
I've never had a notebook "get lost", but I guess if they become cheap enough people will lose them more often as they'll be less careful with them. But if a notebook does "get lost", the price of the hardware is the least of your concerns. The data that's on the notebook falling into the wrong hands is a much greater concern, and that has no relation to the price of the computer.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Okay. If we're going to start nitpicking...
My last job (I'm currently a full-time student) was as an IT guy in a 40% Mac, 60% PC shop.
The Macs definitely cost us less to maintain per machine, simply because we never had to remove spyware from them.
If a mac came in with a hardware problem, it was more often than not covered under our support agreement with Apple, and we'd box it up and ship it out at Apple's expense. If it was an urgent matter requiring a turnaround of more than the 2 or 3 days it took to do a depot repair, we'd lend them a spare. When buying in bulk, the support contracts are usually cheap enough to be "definitely worth it".
Sure, it's probably not optimal, and I suppose that it's not great for our job security either, but it also never really bothered anybody.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Considering that technology has become relatively stable, along with the advent of USB and Firewire, the need for an expandable system is pretty much negated.
So in your world, every time you need a new feature, or more storage or a different kind of drive on your system, you drape another cord-attached dongle across your desk.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I'd rather back up! Duh!
Or just leave everything on network storage, and use the laptop as a dumb terminal!
It's not rocket surgery, people!
(Well, ok, it might be for Joe User...)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Over the nearly 30 years of computing I've done Ive found many of those things (video digital image work, etc) don really need power but if you don't have power you need patience (instead of rendering transitions of video in real time you wait five minutes, etc.)
And back when I had more novice enthusiasm and a lot less money to spare I would wait all that extra time for programs to do their things, and the results were just as spectacular on a much more expensive but faster box.
The myth that last years computers are just usable as word processors is just a myth. Same goes for the OLPC and other lower powered PCs. For kids (like me, years back) it's just the opportunity to try cool things on a computer that make up any speed issues.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
That works just as well the other way around. Desktops have their appropriate uses, but laptops work just fine for a huge percentage of people.
Well, the company paid for my laptop, so "cheaper" doesn't matter to me -- or to other people, in a similar situation.
My desktop recently died. It was likely either the CPU or the motherboard, but I figured I should probably replace both, since new CPUs are cheap -- like $60 for a new dual-core 64-bit. This was made even less of an issue by my friend, who was looking to upgrade his CPU, so he gave me his old one -- so it made even more sense just to rip the motherboard and replace.
But the new motherboard was DDR2 only, and I had DDR400 in the old machine.
Thus, I ended up replacing CPU, motherboard, and RAM. I think I might've kept the same PSU, and also video card, power supply, case, monitor, and hard drives.
However, if you add it all up... It's an old video card. I could probably buy a newer, faster one for less than $100.
Hard drives are about the most replaceable things on laptops. Power supplies are cheap. So about the only real loss to buying a new laptop, versus the upgrade I made to my desktop, was not being able to upgrade the computer without upgrading the monitor.
Realistically, most people don't do it that way. New desktops are generally cheaper whole, and by the time something dies, or you just feel like you want an upgrade, pretty much everything in that box is going to be obsolete, to the point you'll want to replace it.
So, I like having my options open, yes. But the modularity inside the case is generally irrelevant, to most people.
And less able to.
Why is that a good thing?
This can also range from a serious problem to a minor nuisance to a huge problem, depending on whether IT is done right at your company.
Ours basically outsources IT. Basically, all the stuff that's actually irreplaceable on my laptop is stored somewhere else. My code is on a server somewhere, my email and documents are on another. I can still work on my own, since the code is checked out on my hard drive, but so long as I remember to check in regularly, all the data is safe.
I also have a disk image of my hard drive in its first usable state, since it was a pain to get drivers, etc working in XP. It took me less than half an hour to get Linux working, including waiting for the installer.
What this means is, if my laptop was stolen tomorrow, they'd get no confidential information (that's all encrypted), and I'd be up and running again in maybe an hour or two with a new laptop, provided it was available.
If it actually died, I could send it back to the manufacturer, let them take their time trying to recover (it's likely under warranty), while I sit comfortably working with a new laptop. Once the old one is properly repaired, it can become the spare.
And if it means a pain in the ass for you, so what? You're on the clock. Unless the vast majority of your time is spent doing nothing until there's a problem, this shouldn't even annoy you -- really, is there some other aspect of IT you'd rather be doing than disassembling a laptop?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet.
BitFrost (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost) is the set of security mechanisms present in the OLPC.
Though I certainly wouldn't care to summarize the entire thing, here's what it comes down to.
User programs don't automatically get the running user's full rights. A calculator has no reason to delete your documents, so why should it be able to? And without your knowledge to boot. On the OLPCs, documents are kept in a special storage area. It isn't a matter of owner read access. In general, for a program to get a user's file poofed in to its chroot sandbox, it has to ask the document service (which presents a consistent dialog). Further, a text editor doesn't need to access the network. The user can access the network, but his or her programs can only do so if explicitly allowed to (various such rights are set at install time, configurable later). Certain combinations of program rights are disallowed at install time (such as both network access and webcam access) but can be enabled later. Plus a lot more.
Sudo/UAC sound nice and all until you realize that programs and users are separate entities.
Yes, there's a lot to learn from the OLPC project. It's designed to be used (safely) by computer-illiterate children who can't (or can scarcely) read. If you think that sounds like a good description of computer users in general, then you're absolutely right. Security as seen in *nix and Windows makes perfect sense for protecting users from each other. That was the goal back in the day. The people with access to a server were supposed to have a general idea of what they were doing (entirely on them if they didn't), and in that case *nix security works well. But computers have gotten more personal, and that assumption is now blatantly false. Anyone thinkng that Windows security problems stop at buffer overflows, or that Linux on the desktop will change anything, is a fool.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
$200 buys a kid one -- see laptop.org. Pretty nice gesture IMHO. Personally I've already got a laptop so if I was gonna spend another $200, instead of getting myself one, I'd just buy one for an additional child.
:)
Any implication that the OLTP gang would just cluelessly hand out the laptops where there are cultural, infrastructure, or other impediments to their good use is, well, clueless. The OLTP folks are far more versed in the realities in the field, in each country that will get laptops, than some arm-chair critic. This is true of most NGOs. They work with locals, and they know what's going on, and they know how to get the best possible results under the circumstances. They care. People who don't care don't go to work for them, because the NGOs count on that caring to get workers who will settle for lower pay than their skill set would command working for industry. This frees up money to apply to their cause which -- guess what? -- they really care about.
It's interesting how people project their own lack of understanding onto others. I see this all the time, especially when I compare the depth of understanding that functionaries in the government of the USA have with the amateurs who criticize policy. Policy is sometimes a step in the wrong direction and the peanut gallery is occasionally correct, but generally the professionals have a perspective that's a thousand times deeper than the I-read-it-in-the-newspaper crowd. Compare the understanding of computers that a professional programmer or net admin has with that of the average user; now admit that the same spread of understanding exists in every other field too. Yeah, even in climate science!
One laptop plus one external display is a dual monitor setup. One laptop plus a dual monitor setup is a triple monitor setup. I've got a keyboard, mouse, external screen, external speakers, and external backup hard drive connected to my laptop when it's on its desk, so I get the best of both worlds. Plus, the battery works as a poor man's UPS. The lights flicker and the network drops, but my computer keeps going.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Re: the lesson is: you probably don't need a laptop
No one device does it all. My basketball buddies said get a cell so we can call you for a game. My $10/20 minutes a month cell phone keeps me connected to the outside world 24/7/31. Perfect.
As an adult student, I need 8 hrs of power, wi-fi/internet, usb, web cam, linux, 7" screen, standard international keyboard and I submit a child would need no less - and all available within the OLPC laptop. Perfection.
All students of the world need to work independenly and collectively in all sorts of environments and hours of the clock. All students of the world need light (a candle) or in this case power for their laptop. Today's world rejects typewriter noise in most environments even though they can operate in the dark without power!
wifi/internet: Dictionaries, news and other learning resources are either too heavy (book format), too expensive or unavailable locally except throught the internet 24/7/365.
USB: is a nice easy standard to memory sticks sticks, hard dives and
standard keyboards at perfect height.
webcam: is the gateway to carrying your reference books and text books (digital photos) in a memory stick and avoiding expensive library (if available) photocopy fees.
CPU speed: Not an issue. I can type way faster than I can learn.
Linux: Safe. No hidden code.
Thanks, OLPC.
Translation: you've never actually seen one.
Have you? Instructions here for the Macbook Pro.
Short:
You have to remove the battery, the ram, no less than 23 screws, keyboard and trackpad, and bluetooth module to get the harddrive.
Thinkpads really aren't all that expensive anymore. Some users report that the quality is worse since it was sold to Lenovo, but I was just able to order a x61s with a top-end low voltage dual-core (L7500) and an LED screen for less than $900.
I pwn this comment. "The Fine Print" says so.