Former OLPC CTO Aims to Create $75 Laptop

theodp writes "Mary Lou Jepsen, who left her One Laptop Per Child CTO gig on Dec. 31st, has reemerged with her sights set on a $75 laptop that will be designed by her new company, Pixel Qi, which is described as a 'spin-out' from OLPC. In a Groklaw interview, Jepsen calls for 'a $50-75 laptop in the next 2-3 years' and says it's time to go Crazy-Eddie on touchscreen prices as well." This is probably good news to Bruce Perens, who thinks that the recent report of Microsoft's dual-boot XO project (with Windows as well as the Linux-based Sugar OS) is a feint driven by Microsoft's fear of "the entire third world learning Linux as children." Update: 01/10 21:22 GMT by T : ChelleChelle adds a link to an excellent interview with Jepsen in the ACM Queue, in which she discusses OLPC and some of the technologies it contains.

Comments

Giver Her a Little More Credit

[eldavojohn]

Love the smell of Vapor in the morning. Ok, well, I guess to be fair, we should give her a little more credit than that. Mary Lou Jepson does have a PhD in opitcs and a BS in EE. She seems to be quite competent and is credited with some key design and inventions for the OLPC and also working politics with companies to design these displays specifically for the laptop, defined by the laptop. Not an easy thing to do.

So I'm guessing she was upset from the cost and believes that she can cut cost by doing again what she did for the OLPC, designing a better, cheaper display. This time, she can probably negotiate better deals as I'm sure the # of XOs in development causes display manufacturers to salivate.

So, before you accuse this of being vaporware, I would caution you that she has held up her end once for the OLPC ... and she seems to be highly motivated. She's got street cred.

Now, what makes me salivate is the site's promise to keep everything open. The software's a given at this point but open hardware would be revolutionary and present yet another learning possibility for users.

Re:Does school OS have anything to do with home OS

[Hatta]

Using more than one OS ensures that they'll learn general skills instead of just learning how to use app ABC on OS XYZ.

Re:How about a DS?

[gad_zuki!]

It doesnt have a keyboard and the screen is way, way too small to be used for anything serious like schoolwork. Just because theyre third-world doesnt mean they deserve junk like this. Their ergonomics should be important to us. Its a real shame it isnt.

Re:How about a DS?

[Kuukai]

Well, this has many of the same problems the Classmate does, according to TFA. It isn't waterproof, it's not very durable despite your assertions (if you don't know someone with a broken one, you need to get out more), and the battery life/expense/environmental-effect isn't very good. Like the sibling posts mentioned, it also requires licenses to develop for, and it has no keyboard, making input tedious. In addition, there are some general factual errors with your post. Hanafuda isn't "for children," so I wouldn't say Nintendo has been in the toy business for a 100 years. Also I don't know of any software to "learn cooking" on the DS any better than you can "learn guitar" on the PS2... Cooking Mama gives you a "general idea," but you're not going to succeed without a real recipe. The kind you can look up on Google. With an XO.