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Mass OLPC Production Begins
eldavojohn writes to tell us that mass production of the first XO laptops has officially started. "The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)"
From that article:
However, the latest twist in the story is nothing but positive. T-Mobile is now offering a year of free Hot Spot Wi-Fi access, good at nearly 8,500 public T-Mobile Hot Spot locations throughout the country, including Starbucks coffee shops, Borders bookstores, and more than 70 major airports across the United States.
The offer is only good from November 12 to 26, and considering a 12-month T-Mobile Hot Spot plan would cost $359 on its own, we can see how this could lead to a lot of OLPC purchases. OLPC has set up a Web site, laptopgiving.org, which has more details.
The original generic sig.
You can't blame Slashdot for this one, there was a post about it last week, see the link at http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/27/1935223 for details.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
They do have a donation-only option, so you can do that if you want.
But plenty of geeks could use the XO for more than a toy. It's screen would make a good e-book reader. It's fast resume and long battery life, light weight, and solid state disk make it better than a standard laptop for grab-and-go type uses.
I won't drag my laptop everywhere, and my cellphone is too small and keyboard-less to use for much web/email or ssh. The XO fits nicely between the two. It looks very useful to me.
That's unfair. The problem with the lead in the paint was due to the standards being changed during production. As such, toys that were made prior to the change in standards could not be magically "unmade" and had already reached the retail shelves. Admittedly, some factories in China were using the inferior paint but for those that weren't, they got a raw deal.
Mattel simply wanted a scapegoat.
Even worse, the majority of the recalls were due to design flaws rather than the paint.
"Chinese manufacturers have taken plenty of heat in the U.S. over recent widespread toy recalls, but U.S. toy maker Mattel says it's mostly to blame. The company says there were flaws in some of the toys' designs."
"A top Mattel executive took the opportunity to apologize to his Chinese colleagues, saying they were being blamed for simply following flawed design plans."
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/09/mattel_recall4.html
The apology from Mattel was too late and too little publicized to change the truthiness of blaming the Chinese.
Not sure if it's been brought up before but...
...shouldn't developing countries be concerned with having electricity in all of their cities and towns?
Yes, it's been brought before, a million times every single time OLPC was mentioned.
I've never been to Uruguay, although I live less than 1000 Km from it, but I have friends who have been there and based on what they say, I'm pretty sure there is electricity all over the country. And (who would say that?) they even have some nice stuff like cellphones and TV sets!
So say we all
None of those are a problem for an ebook reader with some extras. The sunlight readable display is very useful compared to most laptop screens.
If I got one, I would use it for reading books out in the field when I am doing some Wildland Firefighting. Low power consumption, nice display, and durability are of more use there than the keyboard layout.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me