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Intel, Microsoft Despised the XO Laptop
gregsim writes "The Wall Street Journal today reports that the new XO laptop, centerpiece of the One Laptop Per Child project, is stimulating an active response from both Intel and Microsoft. The companies evidently feel threatened by the little upstart, intended to help third-world children. (The XO runs Linux and uses AMD chips.) Microsoft has cut their software to $3 each and Intel has designed their own laptop called the Classmate to sell between $230 and $300, nearly double the XO's price. Rather than defend the relative merits of his creation, professor Negroponte is crying foul and (if the article is to be believed) not even arguing the technical merits. The initial demand for the XO has fallen well below Mr. Negroponte's projections as Intel and Microsoft have successfully argued that their entries are superior. 45,000 have been ordered through the Give One, Get One campaign. I am happy that I ordered mine — it will be a landmark model in any case."
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Maybe a long time if Walmart decides that selling $200 laptops along side their $200 desktops sounds like a good idea. Granted that won't help children in developing nations much, but it'd sure do something interesting to the PC market.
It's irrelevan whether MS/Intel or Linux/AMD's product is "better". All that matters is that kids in bad situations get access to technology and information to advance their futures. If either of them is serving the cause, then it should be supported regardless on what camp one stands.
I'm not sure about Intel's role in this, but Microsoft undoubtedly sees a threat beyond what's being discussed here. The threat isn't directly Negroponte and the One Laptop Per Child project, it's Linux. If you put a cheap laptop in the hands of a few hundred million kids, they won't grow up to be afraid of it. That's the real threat. Microsoft's threat horizon exceeds a generation.
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... without a classROOM?
...
The XO is designed to work without one. No mains, no shade, no dust-free environment, no roof to keep the rain out
What makes the XO special is what it is what it _does not need_.
Good question, and the answer is that Negroponte's goal is NOT to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children.
http://laptop.org/vision/index.shtml
"It's an education project, not a laptop project."
-- Nicholas Negroponte
No matter how many times it is explained over and over again it seems Intel and Microsoft have successfully twisted this story of constructive education into some cheap assed laptops for the poor expanding market dilema where there is a need for competition. If Negroponte is pissed he has good reason to be and anyone at Intel or Microsoft who has been involved in the stupid classmate PC project and the efforts to kill OLPC should be ashamed of their scum bag used car salesman tactics.
Negroponte and his team put in the effort to research and develop their constructive education idea and now that they have implemented all their learnings and research into a ready to deploy solution you have these greedy bastards trying to destroy the project in the name of market share and profits. And make no mistake about it, neither Intel nor Microsoft actually have any interest in the goals of the OLPC project or the poor countries it is intended for, their involvement is self serving and designed to generate PR so they can maintain mind share in their current markets, not in some imagined expanding market in poor countries where they see potential for profit.
I may come across as rather harsh on the classmate PC and Microsoft and Intel's actions but again I think its deserved considering the years of work the OLPC people put into a non-profit project with admirable goals only to see it threatened in the name of greed.
Not true at all. The poster child for the situation is Netscape, but Microsoft has "done a Netscape" on lots of other startups.
Fact is, a high-quality product by a small, underfunded company can be and often is squashed by a poor-quality product with a large advertising budget. That has been Microsoft's approach from the very start, when they had the huge IBM budget behind the first model "IBM PC". The tech world smugly predicted that such a shoddy, overpriced computer couldn't possibly succeed against the many better things that were already for sale. But it did succeed, and most of those CP/M companies are long gone, because people recognized the IBM brand, and IBM could spend more on the ad campaign than the entire operating budgets of all its competitors combined.
That's exactly what MS will try here, and chances are very good that they'll end up bankrupting the OLPC project before it gets off the ground. MS has already shown that it's willing to use bribery and back-room politics to derail OLPC orders. They've probably learned to not be quite so blatant, and cover their tracks a bit better, and they may well succeed with such tactics in many cases.
This campaign could well be yet another textbook case in how monopoly capitalism works. Stay tuned; it'll probably be well covered here, though not in the mainstream media.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Few tout capitalism as a perfect system. Most of us are aware of its shortcomings, including a more uneven distribution of wealth. But when it comes to alternatives like socialism, capitalism has proven to be more stable and progressive at once time and time again.
By the way, the ability for bigger companies to take advantage of their size to steal business is not capitalism. Capitalism is competition, and this would obviously be anti-competitive. In the U.S. we have laws against this which are rarely enforced. For this reason, many people get it into their heads that capitalism is broken and socialism is better, when in fact the real problem and solution is simply to enforce the laws. Socialism would merely retard our progress which it has proven to do repeatedly. If you bring up China as a counter-example, note that China's power and influence has risen in the world as it has accepted capitalism.
In short, capitalism is good when the laws work to ensure good competition. Unfortunately, right now we have a government in the U.S. full of people who don't really listen to what the people say (specifically Congress), but writing your representatives would traditionally have been a good idea. The only thing to do now is elect better people next time.
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No real vendor support. Who is going to buy these things when they have to fix every single problem themselves?
;-)
I'll bet that in most villages (or poor urban neighborhoods), there'll be 2 or 3 kids with these that'll immediately want to take them apart and learn how they work. They'll also dig into the software, and start writing their own. The rest of the kids will call them the local equivalent of geeks and nerds, but they'll learn. And they'll be the local support crew.
An important ideal in the OLPC project has been to make the kids as independent as possible of the external power structures that have kept them down. Making them dependent on outsiders for support would only continue this bad history. Making it easy for the kids to take the gadgets apart and study them means that they'll be independent of outside support.
Of course, the companies that make their profit from support contracts can be expected to find this a threat. It is a threat to their future profit. Some of those kids are going to be the local suppliers in the future. And they won't be beholden to a foreign computer supplier, because their supplier has worked to make them independent.
It is a bit curious that this approach is being pushed by an American "entrepreneur". Who'd'a thunk?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As I said on ./ on Fri July 13, OLPC is a project, not a product. Just because the current XO laptop is AMD Geode-based doesn't mean the next gen OLPC product won't be based on the 2008 (less than 1 watt) Intel
Silverthorn processors which would likely be the basis of XO v2 - which will be much faster with even lower power draw.
The Classmate is what it is. If a country wants it more than the XO and used some legitimate criteria for deciding, they have the right to do so. Intel certainly looked at what buyers found attractive about the XO in designing the Classmate - OLPC should look at what customers find attractive in the Classmate for XO v2.
First of all, that summary was kind of long and confused. Is this story about:
1) Microsoft cutting software prices?
2) Intel making similar hardware?
3) The price of Intel's similar hardware? ($230 is hardly double the XO's price, considering it's currently $200. But, you know, we'll go with it.)
4) Mr. Negroponte's disappointment in the demand for it?
5) 45,000 XO laptops have been ordered?
It just kind of rambles from one point to another without being firmly *about* any of them.
Secondly, isn't imitation the greatest form of flattery? How can you be so sure that MS and Intel are saying "let's crush this program!" and not "hey, that's a good idea, let's try it."
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Because their governments make poor decisions. Also, from what I heard from a friend of mine who used to work at a manufacturing company, Intel uses (highly illegal, in the US) strong arm tactics. His company responded to threats by Intel (that they better buy their multisourced chips from Intel, otherwise their single sourced chip orders wouldn't be filled), by resesigning their product to use NO Intel chips.
Bribes and threats. That's what Intel probably has going for it in the 3rd world. No doubt those MIT nerds aren't up to that level of the game. So they'll fail.
DRM and IP are abso-freaking irrelevant to the education of third world students. The goal is to improve education. All actions by all players should be viewed through that lens. So bring up IP and DRM, if you think that effects the education of the end users ( and please explain that non obvious point), but not because you hate MPAA and RIAA because of what they do that affect your life. We are NOT talking about you. Negroponte is upset because Microsoft is using pressure to use an inferior product at a higher price which will be worse for the students. Period.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I wonder if part of the reason for the lower than expected demand was that they've not allowed international buyers, while the laptop has garnered international attention. The boss and I were going to put forward a proposal for the city we work for to buy ten or so through the give-one-get-one program, with the ten we got going to the library system. The donation thing makes the city look good, and the laptops themselves are perfect for library use: durable, nearly idiot-proof and cheap enough that it's not a major concern if someone breaks it or 'steals' it. Heck, in the latter case, we could remotely brick it to encourage its return.
And then we saw the "only for US and Canadian residents" notice and our hearts sunk.
And anyone who has more than a few months of experience in economics knows that the third world is fairly inelastic in their demand for computers so this argument is complete nonsense because these people simply cannot buy a $500 computer.
Which is exactly the problem. The OLPC program wants children to have access to computers for educational uses. Microsoft and Intel want to make money, which they will likely not be able to do in the long run, at the prices the XO goes for. Which means that their best bet is to run it out of town then hike prices and leave out a big segment of the society. But those people don't really count as they don't have money.
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I think part of the reason may be fear of losing a big part of their market to super-cheap laptops.
Most people use their laptops/destops to do mundane stuff: email, web-browsing, word-processing/spreadsheet stuff mostly. A $100-$200 laptop that could run firefox/openoffice, small enough to fit on your lap in coach-class of the airplane, and could run all day could really cut into their sales.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
And your evidence for this is what exactly, other than your person incredulity? Every one of the suppliers for the XO's parts has a profit motive.
Well, there is the fact that the XO is sold by a non-profit and it uses an OS that costs no money, so it makes sense to say that anyone selling such a computer will be able to undercut the prices of a company making money on both the OS and the hardware.
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Even though there is no real economic market in these areas, Intel and MS are salting the fields. Preventing other competitors from gaining a foothold is the endgame.
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