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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.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
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.
You can buy two for $400 starting november 12th. One for you, one is donated to a 3rd world kid.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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...
There is a tremendous amount to patent, but I don't think the OLPC project owns the rights to most of it. Six hour battery life for active use, closer to 24 just using the screen in black and white to read. Pull the string for 1 minute and you get 10 minutes of use. The interface is totally different than anything I have ever used before. A tremendous amount of innovation went into these laptops, and whether I think the project will "succeed" or not, everyone who worked on this project has my respect.
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.
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.
Correction: One is donated, if, and only if at least 5,000 people sign up for the deal.
Without any other committing statements contradicting this, I take it to mean that if 3,000 people sign up, they'll send out 3,000 very overpriced XO's to those who order, and the poor kids get no machines.
And no mention about who is going to pay for the infrastructure needed for the machines either, if they reach the 5,000 goal. Not only do they need a support apparatus, but the machines themselves need electricity (the crank never came out, and the other battery charging implements are still not in production, if they ever will be) and Internet (the applications on the XO are leased and have to be renewed over Internet every so often). Just handing out machines like it was bread won't do people any good.
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.
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...)
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?
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
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 $100 laptop equipped with 100 electronic textbooks could be worth its weight in gold in such a third-world setting."
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ah, intelligent debate. Beautiful.
... Multiple connectivity (without USB spaghetti hanging out of your machine?) Dual miniPCI slots? Do =400$ boxes have these?
The mac mafia can blow me. There's things that macs do well, and there's things that they don't. PC's can edit video too. We say macs are preferable because it is nicer to do on a mac. And just like you can run photoshop or premiere on a PC, you can run some games on a mac. If you go through more than two games in a year, however, and don't want to be specifically choosing them off a somewhat narrow mac compatibility list, XP is the 99.9% compatible platforms for games, macs (maybe) coming in as a distant second. Recommending a mac for gaming is bad religion-driven advice, aimed to cynically use your "geek" status to bolster the ranks of your religion rather than do good to whoever is being advised.
Now, back to the topic:
1. I *import and resell* miniITX and nanoITX kit. You're preaching to the quire. I know damn well what a supposedly "underpowered" box can do, be you running gentoo, OpenBSD, or even woe and behold, Vista.
2. UMPC's are still immature, especially and specifically the sub-400$ ones. I'm VERY MUCH looking to some ultracheap yet seriously expandable platforms and reasonably powered (a 1GHz C7 or an 800MHz dothan is VERY reasonable).
Thing is, one can get VERY cheap biggest and fastest:
[a] CF cards
[b] miniPCI wireless cards
[c] SODIMM RAM any size you care to want
[d] miniPCI Wireless cellular cards
on ebay.
I want UMPCs where you can plug a mountain of the above, plus a USIM.
Now, to my point:
I claim this is a FASLE STATEMENT: If average joe doesn't need power [gaming/video/other-crunching], one such UMPC is all he needs.
NOT the reasoning: because it has too little CPU/RAM/Disk (most can be upgraded most of the time anyway if he REALLY wants Vista)
The reasoning:
[a] Joe may not want to have a desktop monitor, may want to stay productive on the go, and may still want a humane resolution to be looking at. That spells bye-bye 8'' screen, bye-bye UMPC pricetag, aka bye-bye UMPC, enter 12'' ultraportables and bigger which spell what-we-already-have, and if you want SERIOUS resolution (Thinkpad X6* Tablet or Toshiba M200 do SXGA+), you have to cough up some serious dough.
Moral: SCREENS COST BIG MONEY, and are pro'lly the BIG influence behind the price drop from ultraportables to UMPCs.
[b] Joe may not want a one hour battery. Small UMPC form factor is nice and cute, but the power consumption of that redesigned-into-a-laptop miniITX or Intel rig is the same as what the bigger ultraportables (or bigger bricks) have. So you have to fit a battery, sized for bigger laptops, on this little thingamajig, to get reasonable off-the-grid time. They don't do that. They give you a smaller battery which lasts less. Joe may not want that.
[c]
When is the UMPC/"underpowered"-rig enough?
1. When used as a DTR, in conjunction with external substitutes for everything it lacks (USB, monitors..)
2. When used somewhere where resolution and battery are not a factor (Mediacenter PC can do just fine with 800x600. CarPC can do ok with 640x480).
3. When used to run samba, asterisk and rtorrent at home, or maybe pfSense, and all you need (^H^H^H^Hwant) is a console.
My Point: There's more offered by "Overpowered-coal-driven-battle-cruiser" laptops than what UMPCs can provide on more fronts than one, too many to make a one-size-fits-all proclamation that they're all Joe needs. That's a falsity. Circumstantially, it can sometimes be right, but it's not anywhere near a generic recommendation.
As always pending a recommendation, It can't be professionally answered without asking what the user actually needs, and that varies.
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Their actual plan is almost the exact opposite of this. By making all of the source code and designs available under a permissive license, they hope other people will start building them. If your country getting good use out of OLPC units? Build a factory to produce any new ones you need, employ local people, and get a workforce that's trained in laptop assembly, educational software development, and so on.
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But basic editing means [...] It took a second or to.
Right.
-b
myselfmusic
(I was GP, but switched to my coal-burner)
Yes: I agree that, if Joe Phishbait's going to have a computer he calls "home", it ain't gonna be some dinky thing with a tiny screen and a clumsy input device.
And, you are right that the current class of UMPCs suffers from poor design choices: they certainly sacrifice the wrong things, and leave other things the same. Putting a smaller battery in it may make a UMPC smaller and lighter, but it reduces its mobility. Using an operating system optimized for driving multiple screens and having multiple windows open at the same time, with lots of pretty animations and effects and a huge memory footprint, may not be the best choice for a handheld device.
But those are two separate issues. Whoever started this is absolutely wrong about the utility of a super-cheap super-portable, insofar as it can replace a "base computer". But, on the other hand, he's right that they can do a lot of the basic tasks, and add portability to the mix. And, for most people, they will fill a need. You know, like a computer in the kitchen.
However, I think you've lost the pack with your need for expandibility. Joe ain't following you there. As you point out, we need to consider the purpose before we select the device. The form of a house is not bricks and wood arranged in a certain manner, but the purpose of providing protection from the elements. Likewise, if you design an UMPC as a low-power CPU, some memory, and a miniPCI-slots stuck inside a small box, you'll end up with today's crop of $1000 one-hour wonders.
The paradigm shift I'm seeing is that we're seeing a new use for computers emerging. Originally, computers were described as a "Lean-forward" system -- games, editing, word processing, whatever, you sat in an upright chair, and leaned in, actively engaged in the thing. Then, with the increase in power, we saw "Lean-back" uses: television (now streaming video), music, and so on. People can sit on couches now, and we're seeing PCs being hooked directly to televisions and running through them. The networking builds up and we see WLANs, mediaservers, and all kinds of cool stuff being used by everybody. But effectively, the same PC can serve as a both a "Lean-forward" and "Lean-back" device: just put a couch behind that office chair. The emergent use I'm seeing gets rid of all this "lean" nonsense altogether: it's the computer you use when you're doing a task that doesn't require constant or intensive interaction with the computer. And many people use their computers this way.
Having the internet on the conference table (among a pile of papers) for easy consultation of reference sources is a tremendous time saver. Need to look something up? grab the tablet and do it. Want to show it to someone else? Pass it around. Want to talk for hours to loved ones in a different country? put the thing in your pocket and go. Out hiking and curious what's over that ridge? bring up the satellite pictures and take a look for yourself. Need to write down detailed notes/instructions in a remote location? unfold the keyboard and go.
In theory, the by the (now $300 with memory cards) n800 can do these things, and if the thing fully worked in practice (aka, if it were not "immature"), it would serve these uses better than a $1000 UMPC or laptop. Battery life largely depends on how long you power the screen: with the screen running, it gives you about four hours (still too short, give me a bigger battery, dammit).
So these devices aren't working yet, and the price is still too high, but when they work, and when they cost around $200 (maybe a third-generation Eee, or a fourth-generation n770, or whatever MontaVista cooks up), they're gonna take up a place alongside desktop and laptop PCs.
But you knew that already.
Well, unless it's a reference to the quire (from the Latin quaternion, originally referring to a gathering of four bifolia, as apposed to a quinternion with five or sexternion with six, now taken by synechdoche to refer to any single gathering of pages; cf. the French cahier) the priest has in front of him, containing his sermon. In that case, I wouldn't be addressing a friendly audience, but rather replying to his post with the substance of his post.
Of course, "preaching to the choir" is the cliche', while "preaching to the quire" would be a novel usage. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Come to think of it, I'm gonna steal "preaching to the quire" for an article on the relationship between oral and written sermons in the XIVth century. Thanks again!