Comparing the OLPC, Classmate and Eee

ZDOne writes "Small and inexpensive notebooks have been a hot topic in recent months as the Classmate, XO laptop, and the Asus Eee go head-to-head with each other for the low end/educational market. ZDNet has a look at all three systems, comparing the three platforms on multiple points of data to determine which of the three fits your needs. 'In terms of overall stylishness the Eee is the winner, but the XO and the Classmate are both more rounded and rugged, and come with carrying handles. The OLPC XO has the biggest screen, an innovative 7.5in. dual-mode transmissive/reflective LCD that can swivel from traditional clamshell mode to 'e-book' mode with the screen facing outwards, tablet-style (although it's not a touch-screen). The Classmate and Eee both have similar, rather cramped, 7in. TFT displays. '"

Comments

Bias?

[Jason1729]

How else do you describe complimenting the OLPC's 7.5" screen while calling the 7" screen on the others cramped?

Re:Bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you've never had sex. .5" makes a huge difference.

Re:Bias?

[Fast Thick Pants]

It's the crazy sort of bias that favors features over inferior or nonexistent features:

• 7.5 > 7
• dual-mode transmissive/reflective LCD
• swivels

Re:Bias?

[zugmeister]

If you just got done reviewing two machines each with a 7" screen, that extra half inch on the third may well seem like a wonderful relief!

Re:Bias?

[Brad_sk]

>7.5 > 7 ok..here we go - http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/asus-set-to-announce-9-inch-eee-pc-900/
Eee PC's 9 inch version.

Re:Bias?

[Chris Mattern]

If it's a 4:3 screen, then the OLPC is giving you almost 15% more screen.
That's not so trivial.

Re:Bias?

[0x4a6f6e43]

You forgot. The OLPC is a freakn 1200 x 900 display. Not 800x600. It's the highest dot pitch display I've ever seen.

Re:Bias?

[Firehed]

True, but you can't refer to anything as "cramped" over a half-inch difference.

Well, okay. But not screens.

Re:Bias?

[(H)elix1]

Sounds like they just started leaking info on the new 9" version of the eepc - here. Looks like more or less the same form factor, bigger screen. We shall see on costs.

Re:Bias?

[SharpFang]

Probably because of Sugar vs XP and others.

I've tried Sugar (on a PC, LiveCD), and it's designed for small display. The icons are big, spaced wide apart, there are no very small elements of the UI at all, the windowless interface always gives whole screen real estate to the currently running application, you never find yourself struggling to decipher some tiny text or click some small piece of UI. It manages the available space well and provides a very good middle ground between number of items visible on the screen at any time and depth of user interface trees.

OTOH WinXP is barely capable of running at 800x600 and not one dialog window will simply not fit on the screen. Switch your XP desktop to 800x600 and try playing with it for a few hours, I assure you you'll feel the screen is cramped and the interface clunky and uncomfortable. Lots of scrolling, lots of opening additional submenus, moving windows, blindly pressing enter in hope it accepts the "OK" of a dialog that didn't fit on the screen and isn't resizable - I did use XP in 800x600 for a while and it does feel cramped.

Re:Bias?

[immcintosh]

XO Resolution: 1200x900 (Grayscale), or 800x600 (Color)
Classmate/Eee Resolution: 800x480

Yes, four-freaking-eighty. Did you even look at all the pictures and read the related text? The third to the last at even a casual glance makes it painfully obvious how cramped looking the other two are in comparison to the XO, whether the specs make it seem that way or not. Doesn't seem even remotely biased to me; more like spot on.

Re:Bias?

[xstonedogx]

You forget that not all inches are equal. Since the OLPC has a squarer aspect ratio (4:3) than the other laptops (5:3) the same seven inches actually means more display area for the OLPC. This difference plus the extra .5" for the OLPC give the OLPC a display area about 6 square inches larger than the display area of the other laptops.

Add to that approximately three times the resolution (1200x900 vs 800x480) and it becomes pretty obvious that the OLPC has a much less cramped screen.

Re:Bias?

[poot_rootbeer]

The OLPC is a freakn 1200 x 900 display. Not 800x600. It's the highest dot pitch display I've ever seen.

The OLPC's resolution is given in what would be termed "subpixels" on a traditional display. So in one sense, an 800x600 RGB-stripe LCD of the same size would actually have a higher resolution: 1.44 million fixed-chroma/variable-intensity picture elements, vs. 1.08 million for the OLPC screen.

Re:Bias?

[emilper]

I am certain XO is superb, but ...

XO - not on sale
Eee - on sale in all the shops

so until I can buy an XO, whether it has 2400x1900 resolution or 600x480, and runs GNU Hurd or Multics, I could not care less ...

Re:Bias?

[gacl]

Dude, this is Slashdot. If you had said: ".5" makes no difference at all." You would have been modded +5 Informative.

Re:Bias?

[Abcd1234]

Except, and I know this is obvious but for those not aware, no other LCD display can use it's full set of subpixels in B&W mode for things like text rendering, like the OLPC can. So during full-colour use it's effective resolution is roughly 800x600, it also has the option of acting as a full, 1200x900 B&W display. And, let me tell ya, in that mode, it looks *fantastic*.

Re:Bias?

[cheater512]

With a screen that small, I'd be going for quantity over quality.

Re:Bias?

[Teilo]

no other LCD display can use it's full set of subpixels in B&W mode for things like text rendering, like the OLPC can True if you limit it to B&W, but not true of subpixel rendering in general. Subpixel rendering in color, for text especially, has been since 1988, when IBM invented it, and in common use since Windows XP (Cleartype). The unique innovation of the OLCP is not subpixel rendering, but the fact that the pixels lose their color in direct light, so it makes sense to create a B&W display mode in which subpixels can be addressed individually. It's a great idea that I hope we see in other devices.

Re:Bias?

[geminidomino]

My thoughts exactly. I'd love one to use as an Ebook reader, but they don't seem to want my money.

eee

[sveard]

I would most certainly buy an EEE if it hadn't had those amazingly ugly speakers on both sides of the screen. If it weren't for those, the screen could be an inch bigger.

Just release the damn thing without speakers (or integrate them somewhere on the keyboard) and with a audio out jack. And the other two (olpc and classmate) are toys IMO. Sure they're decent for educational purposes but not for bussinesses, unlike the EEE (if equiped with a decent operating system)

Re:eee

[mls]

If the speakers weren't there, I doubt the screen would be an inch bigger.
The 7 inch screens are a commodity (think portable DVD player) and as such are cheapish to produce. A 9 inch screen (the next logical step up in my mind), are more expensive now, likely because their demand is lower. I'm sure they could offer a larger screen, but at a much much higher cost, one that wouldn't compete well with the $500 low-end notebooks.

Re:eee

[plus_M]

if equiped with a decent operating system Vista does not run on the Eee.

Re:eee

[mls]

In addition, a larger screen would draw more power; something the Eee and it's small battery try to sip.

Re:eee

[IndustrialComplex]

If it weren't for those, the screen could be an inch bigger.


The screen won't magically become bigger if you remove the speakers. It would require selecting a larger LCD, and that means it would cost more. At the very least, it would cost more to add a larger screen than you would save by removing the speakers. You would then have to issue headphones with each OLPC, and probably have to replace them as they are lost/damaged/stolen.

The target audience isn't the average /. geek.

Re:eee

[lixee]

You do realize that the Eee PC900 was announced today at CeBIT, don't you? http://eeesite.net/2008/03/asus-announces-next-generation-eee-pc.html

Re:eee

[ls -la]

If it weren't for those, the screen could be an inch bigger.


The screen won't magically become bigger if you remove the speakers. It would require selecting a larger LCD, and that means it would cost more. At the very least, it would cost more to add a larger screen than you would save by removing the speakers. You would then have to issue headphones with each OLPC, and probably have to replace them as they are lost/damaged/stolen.

The target audience isn't the average /. geek. He's actually talking about the Eeepc, not the OLPC. Yes, it would cost more for the bigger screen, but no, Asus would not have to provide headphones, and certainly wouldn't have to replace them after they're lost/damaged/stolen.

Re:eee

[Anonymous Coward]

The screen won't magically become bigger if you remove the speakers. It would require selecting a larger LCD
No?! You have to be kidding! I thought nanotech would increase the screen's size automagically?!

Re:eee

[lixee]

You do realize that the Eee PC900 was announced today at CeBIT, don't you? http://eeesite.net/2008/03/asus-announces-next-generation-eee-pc.html/

Re:eee

[Hatta]

Make up for the increased cost by skimping on other components. I don't care how slow it is. I got real work done on original pentiums, but I've never done real work on a 7 inch screen. Screen size is absolutely the most important feature of these machines.

Re:eee

[mls]

I knew it was coming, but didn't realize it had been announced yet.
9 inch screen and more RAM and storage for 100 Euros more ($150 US).
399 Euro's equates to $600 at today's rates. Like I said, you can get a low-end full-size notebook (with the Vista tax even) for that price or less. The only thing you lose with the full size, well, is the compact and easy to carry size. Battery life might be better with the Eee, though that is hard to compare without specifics.

Re:eee

[bjmoneyxxx]

umm, it actually does http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.wired.com%2Fgadgets%2F2007%2F12%2Fvista-running-o.html&ei=r1bMR-f9EpO0igHi2KGoDg&usg=AFQjCNFleLdNPAdq_3BKEwST9aHFIumWLA&sig2=G0nVxLoA77m_jWLEz3R6rA

Re:eee

[bjmoneyxxx]

I'm not sure about the third, but the EEE PC gets ~2.5-3 hours, while the OLPC can get 10-12 in black and white mode. So their goes your fig-brained idea.

Re:eee

[LWATCDR]

Last time I checked the EEE had a good OS on it. With the latest version of Ubuntu I find that I only have boot Windows to run Flight Simulator.
I can surf the web, do email, work with digital pictures, chat, IM, play videos, and use Quicken on-line just fine under Linux.
If you have some software that you must use that only works in Windows well then yes you may need Windows but that has nothing to do with the quality of the OS.

Re:eee

[psychodelicacy]

I would disagree. I use an Eee for a lot of stuff because it's small and portable. It's obviously not good for graphics programmes, but I would never use anything smaller than a regular laptop for that anyway (and I wouldn't even think of using it for gaming!) It's fine for actually viewing photos. Word processing is perfectly good, especially if you're prepared to play with the settings to allow the text to fill the screen. Ditto email and web. I code on it too, and again the size doesn't cause a problem.

I'm sure some people who've used an Eee haven't had as good an experience, and that's fair enough. But I would say don't write it off until you've actually tried it for a while. It takes some getting used to, but a month down the line I think it's one of the best purchases I've ever made.

Re:eee

[mls]

I'll go fishing...

I have utmost respect for the OLPC and it's superior screen design when it comes to power consumption and daylight readability. If you haven't heard Mary Lou Jepsen speak on the subject, here is presentation she gave the other day.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/20/mary-lou-jepsen-at-greener-gadgets/

FWIW, I was contrasting the battery life of the Eee PC against it's current version and other readily available low-cost notebooks, not the XO or Classmate (which likely is comparable to the Eee). I could have been more clear. The 3.5 hours the 4G and 8G models get is much better than what I get on either of my notebooks. That is primarily due to the small screen requiring less power, and the solid state "disk" not needing to spin like a conventional drive. A 9 inch screen based on the same technology would draw more power, and would drain the battery quicker.

Re:eee

[Drooling Iguana]

The Eee doesn't run the latest version of Ubuntu. It runs a really shitty stripped-down version of Xandros. Sure, you can install eeeXubuntu and get some decent functionality out of the machine, but the OS it comes with is crap.

Re:eee

[Oktober Sunset]

I bet the guy responsible for that also puts ferrets down his trousers. Remember, just cos you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

Re:eee

[corky842]

Instead of Flight Simulator, have you tried X-plane?

Re:eee

[hummassa]

I have one, too, and the only thing that I miss is a bigger keyboard (darn fat fingers!)... I use it at home at all times, and while my old laptop was a hassle to get from the bag (weight, ...), the eeepc is a breeze.

Re:eee

[jedie]

Either this person is a frikkin genius on so many levels or I am extremely gullible

Re:eee

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that the 399 euros is including tax, which I forget the german rate but it could be 21% or thereabouts. $600? More like $500 before tax, and everyday portable, and now usable with the bigger screen.

Re:eee

[bjmoneyxxx]

But he wasn't asking if he should put a ferret down his trousers, he was saying you can't, which, if you'd like, I could probably find a link...

Re:eee

[zsau]

But how many people are buying the EEE because they want a tiny computer, versus people who can't afford anything better? I certainly don't know anyone who can't afford anything better, but I do know people who've bought one because it's tinysmall. That's its killer feature.

(Also, I've usually found European prices to be more expensive for computers and related hardware than US or Australian prices; $500 might be a more reasonable conversion.)

Re:eee

[BurgerTime]

> Like I said, you can get a low-end full-size notebook (with the Vista tax even) for that price or less.

And for half the price, you could buy a more powerful desktop. How exactly does this help a person who wants a tiny computer?

Re:eee

[James McGuigan]

I bet you didn't say that when this guy put doom on his ipod.

Re:eee

[LWATCDR]

Yes I have that also. It is very good but not as good as FS IMHO. At least for me.

Can one develop software on the XO?

[MichaelCrawford]

I understand that although it has a Linux-based OS, it doesn't have a regular kind of filesystem.

Lately I've been entertaining the idea of moving to somewhere in the developing world where all the kids have XOs, and teaching them to code.

I've seen two maps of the Earth that led to this idea. One was a photo of the entire Earth taken at night, made from many satellite photos mosaiced together. The other is a live display that they have in a lobby at Google, that shows a real-time display of queries submitted to their search engine, in the form of bright spikes whose height is proportional to the rate of query submissions.

In both of these, most of the world was lit up - except for Africa. South Africa had some light, but most of Africa was dark.

Maybe if we taught African kids to write software, they could start businesses that would make their lives better.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Digi-John]

Here's an idea--instead of giving African kids laptops and teaching them C, why don't you focus on some more basic stuff? God knows roads, medicine, sanitation, water, better farming techniques, industrial techniques, etc. are nowhere near as geek-tastic as getting these kids to write code, but which do you think will be more useful?

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[agent_no.82]

Don't forget education and birth control. In order for it to work, education and infrastructure upgrades have to go hand in hand. Properly fixing Africa so it wont be needy anymore is not going to be cheap in the short run.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[TheRealMindChild]

This may sound a bit harsh, but I think they need to learn other things first, like sex education and agriculture.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[JustinOpinion]

although [the XO] has a Linux-based OS, it doesn't have a regular kind of filesystem. It does have a regular filesystem. The sugar UI organizes things based on activities (a.k.a. programs) and has a journal (a.k.a. search system) that shows you all your documents (a.k.a. files). Despite this abstraction, a normal filesystem hides beneath.

'Hides' is probably the wrong word. One of the activities is a terminal, with which you can browse the conventional Linux filesystem normally. You can SSH into the XO, and use terminal commands to install new software. You can even install a new desktop environment (e.g. xfce) to replace sugar if you prefer. It's a low-power machine, but it's running a full-featured Linux distro.

Lately I've been entertaining the idea of moving to somewhere in the developing world where all the kids have XOs, and teaching them to code. That sounds like a fantastic (and altruistic) thing to do. If you're used to coding in Linux, and using Python in particular, you'll find coding on the XO to be a fun. Personally I find the built-in keyboard hard to use, so I usually connect a USB keyboard and mouse if I'm working on it for an extended period.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The other is a live display that they have in a lobby at Google... most of the world was lit up - except for Africa."

Maybe they mostly use MSN or Yahoo in Africa?

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[0x4a6f6e43]

The XO is Fedora. The file system is normal (a $40 8 Gig sdhc card drops right in and gets some good storage space). Yes you can develop code for it. It supports python with a "kid friendly" environment that makes programming a little more accessible. Kind of reminds me of the old Commodore 64, you can hack code easily. Check it's wiki: wiki.laptop.org

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[flitty]

Preferrably in that order... hell, the first will reduce the severity of the second.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[deathtopaulw]

oh hey look another idiot who doesn't get it
how can people like you continue to pop up after we beat the shit out of you every time?

here's a hint... the OLPC is not for the dying children with flies on their faces ok
get a fucking clue asshole, you're subverting everyone's efforts to make the world better

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Stanistani]

>This may sound a bit condescending, but I think they need to learn other things first, like sex education and agriculture.

Fixed.

Why not teach the students who already have some infrastructure, how to develop more. It would perhaps be possible to have some sort of low-cost, sturdy computing device, introduced into the educational system, to assist in this effort.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Here's an idea--instead of giving African kids laptops and teaching them C, why don't you focus on some more basic stuff? God knows roads, medicine, sanitation, water, better farming techniques, industrial techniques, etc. are nowhere near as geek-tastic as getting these kids to write code, but which do you think will be more useful?

In many places they have water and they used to have farms. Then the US (and other countries) dumped produce on their market below the true cost (subsidized) such that local farmers could not compete. So the local farmers were undercut, couldn't pay their taxes and are now unemployed and homeless. It isn't that they don't know how to farm. It is that they can't make enough money farming to get by. They might be able to compete despite the unfair price of imported food if they could use modern practices, but they don't have the industrial infrastructure needed to make the heavy equipment and fertilizers and irrigation systems and they don't have the capital to buy it. The money needed to fund such a project would be way, way, way more than what is spent on the OLPC project.

Truthfully, there really isn't a better industry than intellectual property creation for high returns on low initial investment. This doesn't necessarily mean programming (in Python not C, since that is what ships with OLPC). Heck, people in some parts of the world could probably make a living with a XO laptop just by solving captchas. Then there is writing, video and audio creation, etc.

The point of the OLPC project is not to just supply what is most needed today, but rather to augment the charity food, water, shelter, and medical care with the tools of education (for any subject) and with the cheapest possible way for them to create a sustainable industry that will allow their society to stop relying on charity and start building again.

P.S. did you know Remote Area Medical, a charity that provides medical care primarily to Africa and east Asia has recently had to start working in the United States because so many Americans cannot get or afford basic medical care? Maybe the US should stop teaching computer science and focus on teaching medicine to more people?

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[TheRealMindChild]

You are a complete idiot. You are pretty much saying, rather than give a blind man a cane and instruction on how to move around (IE how NOT to fall over your cat, down the stairs), you want to put him to work in an assembly line.

There may be the most brilliant minds locked up in the cesspool called Africa, but if they can't eat and keep from getting AIDS, what bloody good does it do them to know how to set up a network or write an ftp client or whatever. Seriously.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[bjmoneyxxx]

parent should be modded up, people really do not seem to understand the basic idea behind this project. It's for developing nations that already have some sort of infrastructure and are trying to improve other parts of their country, in the OLPC's case, education. All these fuck-heads trying to be funny should be dropped in one of these countries with out roads and what-not, you'd be squealing like a fat piggy in no day.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[shunnicutt]

> Personally I find the built-in keyboard hard to use, so I usually connect a USB keyboard and mouse if I'm working on it for an extended period.

When I connect an external keyboard, I turn the display around on the XO and angle it away from me, so that the XO's keyboard is behind the screen, rather than in front. I find this to be more comfortable.

You may have already considered this, but nobody I've demonstrated this to had figured it out for themselves.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[notamisfit]

I don't think that either will be particularly useful in the long run, but apparently they go a long way towards assuaging white guilt, which is their real selling point.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[kevinank]

Just to clarify, the XO has a hierarchical filesystem that you can access from the shell. The actual filesystem is JFFS (for Journaling Flash Filesystem) which allows you to turn off the laptop by holding the power button without losing information or waiting through an fsck.

XO activities store files in a keyed datastore hosted on the filesystem, so for the most part you are protected from the filesystem, but it is still there if you need it e.g. for development.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Stanistani]

What have you done for Africa?

I've contributed time and money to microloans (set up small businesses), AIDS prevention and care, clean water initiatives (dig wells, set up distribution systems, monitor contaminant levels), Doctors Without Borders, malaria extermination, blindness prevention (there are some common ways to become blind in underdeveloped countries).

They need all of the above, and a way for the able to advance, just as a blind man needs to learn Braille...

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[russellh]

See this. It's pretty damn good.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[91degrees]

It's not really for Africa. At least not the poorest parts. Take slightly less poor contires.

India has roads, medicine, sanitation, water, and good farming techniques. They need to improve their industrial techniques especially in areas such as software development and information technology. Same goes for Brazil, Mexico, and that covers about 20% of the world.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...blindness prevention (there are some common ways to become blind in underdeveloped countries).

Heh. I was just reading the other day that preventable kinds of blindness cause nearly four times the rate of blindness or serious reduction of vision in the USA as in Canada. At least when it comes to providing preventative medicine, the USA counts as one of those underdeveloped countries.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[h4w6af6oitsbn7pc]

In many places they have water and they used to have farms. Then the US (and other countries) dumped produce on their market below the true cost (subsidized) such that local farmers could not compete. So the local farmers were undercut, couldn't pay their taxes and are now unemployed and homeless. It isn't that they don't know how to farm. It is that they can't make enough money farming to get by. They might be able to compete despite the unfair price of imported food if they could use modern practices, but they don't have the industrial infrastructure needed to make the heavy equipment and fertilizers and irrigation systems and they don't have the capital to buy it. The money needed to fund such a project would be way, way, way more than what is spent on the OLPC project. Could you link to a source for that? I believe that bad local politics (to say nothing of war) is a large reason for African poverty. Despotism in Zimbabwe, genocide in Sudan, war in Kenya...

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[LordSnooty]

In both of these, most of the world was lit up - except for Africa. South Africa had some light, but most of Africa was dark. Maybe if we taught African kids to write software, they could start businesses that would make their lives better.

I'm right with you on the second part, but can we forget the first? At least long-term, as we find ways to reduce our own light pollution in the West, which we can then pass on to our newly-wealthy friends in Africa.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Could you link to a source for that?

Sure.

Here's a Google Scholar link to one book on the subject:Smaller, C. 2005. Planting the Rights Seed: A Human Rights Perspective on Agricultural Trade and the WTO. Backgrounder No. 1, THREAD Series, IATP: Minneapolis , MN .

See almost anything by Devinder Sharma, but particularly "Africa's Tragedy; Famine as Commerce."

...or, just do a Google search for "africa agriculture dumping."

I believe that bad local politics (to say nothing of war) is a large reason for African poverty. Despotism in Zimbabwe, genocide in Sudan, war in Kenya...

There are a great many contributing factors. If local governments did not exorbitantly tax the people and especially farmers as a way to confiscate and resell land, such a scheme would not work. If there were reasonable tariffs on imported food, this would not be an issue. It is awfully hard to run a campaign, however, with the stated policy of taxing imported food distributed by charities. It is especially difficult when the charities are associated with organized religion that has huge influence within the country. It is even harder when your opposition is backed by donations from said charities as well as big business and wealthy foreign powers.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the poverty and hardship in the third world... from rampant, violent colonialism and exploitation in the past to present day exploitation by both unscrupulous native politicians and foreign corporate interests. You are quite correct in pointing out the role of local politics and and war, although you might want to look closely at who has funded the wars and provided the arms. Regardless, providing necessities to people in such poverty will almost always lead to a a growing dependance upon that charity... which we all know is not sustainable in the long run. Human nature will always provide those looking to take advantage of charity by, using it to redirect resources that would otherwise be sustaining those people to profit a small minority.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[chris_sawtell]

You'd probably be better off developing most of whatever you want to develop in a normal development environment, and then move over to an XO environment emulated on your normal machine. Use a physical XO for the final testing.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[rvJJax]

Here's an idea--instead of giving African kids laptops and teaching them C, why don't you focus on some more basic stuff? God knows roads, medicine, sanitation, water, better farming techniques, industrial techniques, etc. are nowhere near as geek-tastic as getting these kids to write code, but which do you think will be more useful? what ? i prefer looking a kid stay in their room. watching a porn while running valgrind in the background. rather than learning how to wasting their car-gas racing in the road or polluting with their "industrial-techniques".

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[LordLucless]

I can code C. I don't know anything about construction, pharmaceuticals, irrigation or modern farming.

Coding feeds me. There's no reason it shouldn't be able to feed them too - some of them at least.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Stanistani]

Separate issue. That's a matter of underinsurance, and outreach. The foundation I contribute to has clinics in the US as well.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Phat_Tony]

Maybe if we taught African kids to write software, they could start businesses that would make their lives better. Education may improve their lives, but it will not allow them to start businesses. The reason they are so poor and have no successful businesses to work at isn't because they lack the education, it is because the countries are essentially ruled by thugs. Anyone who does anything successful will face thugs- whether they be politicians, police, regulators, warlords, or just local thugs, or even the neighbors, these people will demand bribes or steal the profits and even your capital. This is the root cause of the lack of success in these countries- not lack of knowledge, lack of entrepreneurial spirit, or lack of motivation, but lack of a system that will allow people to get ahead through honest hard work, because if you try, a dishonest person with more power will come take whatever you have.

I'm not trying to say your mission isn't worthwhile. You may be able to improve these people's lives by teaching them to code- they may be able to take small foreign programming jobs online and keep their additional fund hidden and stay under the radar. They may be able to get VISAs for skilled workers and move to somewhere where they can have a much better life. They may see more possibilities and it will create greater motivation to take political action and try to form a non-corrupt system. And it may improve people's lives simply thorough delight in learning. But don't expect it to allow them to start successful businesses; lack of programming knowledge isn't what's holding them back from doing that. It's primarily the state of corruption. Yes, there are problems with lack of capital, infrastructure, education, etc., but several countries have shown that you can start to build those things up once you've got rule of law and some basic economic freedoms. Other countries have shown that huge amounts of foreign aid will still mostly serve to line the pockets of those who's suppression is what makes their people worthy of our aid.

Re:Can one develop software on the XO?

[Anonymous Coward]

what? and break the cycle of moving pollution from the old industrial nations to the developing ones?

comming up next on slashdot..

[LingNoi]

comparing apples, oranges and bananas.

OLPC - kids education
Classmate - older kids education
Eee - web browsing and IM

Re:comming up next on slashdot..

[meringuoid]

OLPC - kids education. Classmate - older kids education. Eee - web browsing and IM

RM, who have had a pretty strong hold on the UK education market since the demise of Acorn, are pushing Eee.

Re:comming up next on slashdot..

[gad_zuki!]

This is very true. I recently got to play with an OLPC and was really blown away by what it was compared to what the online consensus of people who have never touched out.

Its a simple education toy that only looks like a laptop. Its more of a specialized educational gadget like a speak and spell than a Dell. Its keyboard is tiny and only for little kid fingers. Its slow and has a very simplified interface. It cant do WPA and has no ethernet port. Its screen is like a very cheap version of e-ink.

I dont see what this has in common with the eeepc. The eeepc is a ulw general purpose laptop. The XO is an educational device for children.

Re:comming up next on slashdot..

[howlingmadhowie]

close

OLPC: education project for the third world
Classmate: attempt to continue and strengthen colonialism
eee: small business laptop for the first world

Re:comming up next on slashdot..

[Wavicle]

almost

OLPC: Every fanboys wet dream
Classmate: Automatically evil because it is made by a large corporation that already gives hundreds of millions of dollars to third world education efforts.
Eee: Can't fault the maker or OS, but isn't OLPC, so make a completely baseless charge.

I own two of these...

[Itninja]

...and Eee & an XO. I would have to agree that the Eee is a better system in general, but the screen is small. My 13 y/o daughter uses it with an external monitor when she is at her desk. My 7 y/o son has the XO and likes it a lot, however he complains that he cannot print anything (CUPS printing is not integrated in the interface). One thing I really like about the XO is the ease of adding new applications. Getting new apps to appear in the Eee's 'easy mode' is a headache at best. But the included suite is hard to beat. The touchpad on the XO is useless as its' sensitivity seems to be set way too high. But it found my wireless USB mouse without a problem. I think both systems are well suited to their respective target audiences.

Re:I own two of these...

[Urger]

Easy Mode is the big problem with the Eee. I ripped the original OS out of there out of immediately and switched over to Ubuntu and later to eeeXubunto and have never looked back. As to the screen on the Eee. It's small. I wish it was a bit bigger but at the price the Eee is available at I'm more then happy to put up with it.... At least until there is a cheaper one with a bigger screen.

Re:I own two of these...

[NeilTheStupidHead]

I also own an Eee and despite it's problems (including the installation issues you mentioned and the poor (IMO) design/placement of the right shift), I think it's a great little machine and I've been very happy with it as a light-weight travel companion. I've grabbed a couple MMC cards for storage of videos, photos, music and e-books to supplement the limited storage space.

Re:I own two of these...

[RedHelix]

Easy mode on the Eee is pretty lousy, but it can be circumvented into full desktop mode pretty easily by installing, like, two packages from Asus's own repository. I run a KDE interface on it with Beryl installed and it looks and works like a champ.

They need to earn foreign exchange...

[MichaelCrawford]

... to have the money to build all that infrastructure. Say you want to build a road. Well, you need a bulldozer. If there's no heavy industry in your country, you're going to have to buy one and import it. For that you need hard currency.

I applaud the efforts of government and charity to improve living conditions by donating money, but it won't be sustainable until those in need can earn the money through the sweat of their own brows.

Look at what it's doing for India, that they built the Indian Institutes of Technology, whose graduates are now doing software development for worldwide customers.

And yes, I realize this isn't patriotic.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ShieldW0lf]

Roads are obsolete technology. They suit horses and cars, and horses are looking like the safer long term bet than cars at this point. States shouldn't be investing in them, but rather in rail systems that are fed by a local renewable energy source, such that they can run forever without a fuel source, and people just get on and off as they see fit. But again, that doesn't result in ongoing leverage over the population, so no business would want to build it.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[downix]

Very smart plan, and it is one that is very doable on the African Continent. Such a programme would enable them to skip huge pieces of now obsolete planning and infastructure that is hobbling the wests growth.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ShieldW0lf]

What is the real human cost difference between:

1) A basic paved road, with maintenance, infrastructure to create fuel, infrastructure to transport fuel, infrastructure to create cars, infrastructure to maintain cars, training in driving, compensation for human error

2) A basic rail system, with maintenance, a renewable energy system, with maintenance

The rail system has a greater upfront cost, but negligible ongoing cost. They did feasibility studies in my region, and determined that it would take around 20 million dollars to set it up.

They didn't have the budget, and they're not allowed to save for next year or their funding gets reduced, so they instead blew their 5 million buying buses that kneel to let disabled passengers on and have a signal system to change traffic lights.

Total waste of money, doesn't fix the transportation problems, leaves us relying on fossil fuels, and if the political system allowed them to save up for new infrastructure with their federal money, they could have paid for it in less than 5 years with the money they wasted on nothing at all.

Someone here is ignorant and naive, but it isn't me.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[fifedrum]

if you had any idea how many horses were in use before cars became common-place, you would cease recommending horses as "safer" in any term, long or short. The whole world would be covered in their manure. You would run out of places to compost it, let alone the billions of acres that would have to be used to produce feed for them, or the new roads and trucks required to ship the feed to the animals...

how about just investing in small parallel running monorail tracks featuring 100 passenger compartments powered by complaints.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[AuMatar]

You've left out at least 1 zero there- Seattle had a initiative for a light rail extention that failed, another dozen or so miles was going to cost billions.

As for the buses- people in wheelchairs are human too. They deserve access to public transportation. That means they need buses that have some sort of ramp or kneeling system.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[immcintosh]

It may cost billions to extend a large commuter light rail a dozen miles in a major metropolitan area in the United States. How much you want to bet in the developing world this is all about, and a cheaper less fancy setup, the cost would be a fraction of that? Really that's just apples to oranges.

Same applies to disabled people--in the United States where we have the resources to do so, we are able force people to see to their needs. Elsewhere, this really can't be a primary concern, and such things can honestly reasonably be overlooked in the short term for more important ends.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Ichijo]

Roads are obsolete technology. They suit horses and cars, and horses are looking like the safer long term bet than cars at this point.

Don't forget bicycles! They were on the roads before cars, and are still on the roads today.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ChrisMaple]

Say you want to build a road. Well, you need a bulldozer.

I've seen the photographs that Julius Caesar took of the bulldozers building the Appian Way.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[grassy_knoll]

Given this:

that doesn't result in ongoing leverage over the population, so no business would want to build it.

Why would government seek to build it either?

It's not as if governments don't seek to control their own populations...

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[QuantumRiff]

You must not be an American. In this country, we would obviously choose option 1, look how many jobs it would create in my congressional district! Not to mention so many new opportunities for increased "revenue" to the state.. You could tax the income of the construction workers, permits, fees, and taxes for the fuel companies, tax cars and fuel... its wonderful! Definitely makes too much sense for you to be American.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Z34107]

2) A basic rail system, with maintenance, a renewable energy system, with maintenance (emphasis mine)

The renewable energy part is a problem. You think you're going to put sails on an AmTrak train? Find a windfarm large enough to power an electric train that would have to continuously carry millions of people? Only let people commute downhill?

As for the budget projection, I'd refer you to the success (or lack thereof) of the "Big Dig" in Massachusetts. Or any government "budget." I'd also be wary about financing things right now because of the monoline crisis and the failure of auction-rate security sales.

Public transportation is nice, and in some places it can/has been successful. But it's not a panacea, especially for a country used to the convenience of travel on your own schedule. It's night impossible to get a job if your hours are dependent on the bus schedule.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ArsonSmith]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they had bulldozers in Julius Caesar's day. That was built using hundreds of thousands of starving and beaten slaves. I suppose we could do it that way if needed. Otherwise a bulldozer will be needed.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it to /. to come around from a tech article on mobile PCs into bashing of the American public.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[mollymoo]

The rail system has a greater upfront cost, but negligible ongoing cost. They did feasibility studies in my region, and determined that it would take around 20 million dollars to set it up.

Where is your region? That's an order of magnitude lower than the costs I've seen for first-world urban light rail projects.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Hognoxious]

Tell me more about this renewable energy source, that can run forever without a fuel source...

There are three necessary conditions:

Wake up at local noon, plus or minus two hours.
Go out of your mom's basement.
Look up.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Carnildo]

I've seen the photographs that Julius Caesar took of the bulldozers building the Appian Way.

I have, too. Are you sure that re-introducing slave labor is a good idea?

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[edittard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they had bulldozers in Julius Caesar's day.

I've seen the photographs he's talking about and they're obviously fakes. I mean, color, back then?

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[CompMD]

"such that they can run forever without a fuel source"

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Hucko]

What we/they need is a modified version of this setup. Use light poles as rfid points or something and we could eliminate a significant portion of the problems you outlay with roads.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ShieldW0lf]

I think oceanic power generation has a lot of potential. I figure it will fit the bill once it's undergone more research, development and refinement in the field.

I don't find it hard to envision a series of such generators along coastlines driving always on, reliable, automated transportation systems that are designed around them.

Once you'd created such an artifact, it would grant reliable transportation to it's region for as long as you continued to maintain it. That leaves a lot of room for new ventures towards greater achievements.

There have been great advancements in using sails for industrial shipping, that's something you could put together with a system such as I've described and create a reliable and sustainable global transportation network for people to gather around.

People should be busting their ass towards achieving such goals now, while there's fuel left.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Z34107]

Interesting about the oceanic power, but I'm waiting for the giant solar power generating space station/space elevator combos in Gundam 00.

But - people will bust their ass when we start running out of fuel. Why? Cause there will actually be money in it then - if the last barrels of crude are $100 bucks a pop, you bet ethanol/solar/magic elves/etc will be affordable! The nice thing about capitalism is where there's money, the problems fix themselves.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Hucko]

Argh! http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ 'this' should have been the link. *Slow down cowboy, slow down*

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[servognome]

But you leave out the impact on other aspects of society.
Option 1 - Allows low density population distribution so people have things like backyards and lower cost housing.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Bert64]

Well said, public transport is a mess in virtually every country i've used it in...
Trains and buses frequently run late, and are often overcrowded at peak hours forcing people to stand for the entire journey... Some of the cramped conditions at peak hours are worse than the cramped animal transports people protested about a few years ago.
During the summer they're far too hot, as are many stations... During the winter stations and bus stops are freezing cold, and you often have to wait quite some time between trains.
Public transport doesn't go everywhere, there are plenty of places you simply cannot get to with public transport.
Some places, even places close by, are extremely time consuming to get to because of the way bus/train routes are laid out, its often necessary to take a convoluted round trip to get to somewhere relatively close, often having to change train/bus several times and waiting considerable periods of time.
Public transport shuts off at night, so it's quite possible to be stranded somewhere. This is made worse when the last train of the day is cancelled, even tho you were on time to take it, and you just get cast out onto the street outside the station.
Public transport is also dangerous, if you are traveling off peak you often find yourself alone on a bus or train with people who might want to rob you or even just beat you up to make a low quality video of it on their cellphone.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Bert64]

Don't forget the space required to dispose of the rotting horse carcasses once they die... By this point they will be old and unsuitable for eating. A car just rusts away once abandoned, an abandoned horse will rot and smell (tho the smell could be masked by the stench of horse manure).

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[aurispector]

Yes, yes, of COURSE it's a good idea. Just don't tell anybody! Right now it's cheaper just to use the chinese, but once they get uppity I'm investing in darkies!

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[elrous0]

I can answer that question. I used to live in a region right here in the U.S. that had excellent railroad infrastructure but a very poor road infrastructure. It was eastern Kentucky.

Want to guess how well it worked out? Type in "poorest region in the U.S." into Google and look what consistently comes up at the top.

Roads are WAY more important than rails, believe me.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Cederic]

I see clouds.

Anyway, he said 'forever'.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[ShieldW0lf]

"such that they can run forever without a fuel source"

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Electricity isn't a fuel, moron.

Re:They need to earn foreign exchange...

[Hognoxious]

When it shuts down, call me and I'll admit you're right.

With an XO and having played with a ClassMate...

[nweaver]

The classmate is a joke. The only thing the Classmate buys is a faster processor, a real keyboard, and 2x the Flash. For 50%-100% more cash.

In return, it is not as rugged (cooling fan and open interior, LiIon batteries, electrolytics, conventional hinge, clunky insecure closure, thick), nor as cheap, nor as useful (sunlight readable display), nor as appropriate for the 3rd world (a >50W power supply!?!).

Also, Windows doesn't understand how to use the Classmate's screen, either having it scroll up and down or squashing the display to fit.

I'd want Windows on the XO, with Windows understanding the screen resolution. THAT would be a nice combination, as Sugar is an abomination all to itself.

Re:Battery life

[pipatron]

I thought all laptops had two antennas, at least my Thinkpad X40 from 2004 has. Just that you can't see them because they are hidden in the plastics next to the screen.

Posting from my EEE PC...

[CFBMoo1]

I slapped XP on the thing and upgraded the ram to 2 gigs. The SD card slot has a nice 16 gig card in it with Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3 installed. I run them at the low end resolution mode which fits fine on this screen.

Oh wait, this is about educational use?? Uh... yeah I take my EEE PC to meetings and if I had this during college I'd have loved it for note taking. It's a sound educational tool that works great with my campus's wired and wireless access points.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[aurispector]

I was drooling over the eee until I read about the cloudbook. Both machines have issues, but the cloudbook has a regular, easy to upgrade hdd whereas the eee requires hacking skills to graft in more storage. The eee is too limited in terms of storage, although with a little effort it could look a lot like the cool mini laptop used in the "hitman" games.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[2short]

Yeah, sliding a card into the SD slot on the side of the thing is pretty tough. That really takes some takes some seriously leet skilz.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because inserting a 16GB SDHC memory card into the card slot on the Eee is really complicated.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[aurispector]

go compare prices on an 80gb 2.5" hdd and a comparable flash card..oops, sorry they don't exist yet.

Get back to me when you have a clue.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[pembo13]

like a usb drive?

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[zevans]

So why exactly would I need 80GB on the EEE when every other device in my household has spare storage and already holds the content I want to see or hear on the EEE?

YOU come back to ME when YOU have a clue. Remember that "thin client" thing that we used to have?

Are you familiar with this here newfangled "network" doohickey at all?

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[2short]

Bingo. I suggested an SD card for humorous effect, but I've actually got an EEE, and I've never wanted extra storage on it at all. I use a USB key occasionally, but just for ease of file exchange.
It's exclusively a thin client, running a web browser or Remote Desktop. Storage, and even significant processing power, doesn't need to come along in my backpack; it can live across the network.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[aurispector]

Knucklewit. I want what I want-personal preference is a valid reason. I want a tiny, self contained portable that will replace my "laptop" in which I can store content files like pictures music and movies for when I DON'T have a network connection (read airplanes). Hence I need a large amount of storage and the eee is deliberately engineered to make this difficult.

The annoying thing about the EEE is that they hard wire the storage to make it virtually impossible to upgrade. Then they charge premium prices for versions with more memory, storage, etc.. It's essentially a closed system. It was also originally supposed to cost $200. Clever marketing.

Doesn't anyone object to being manipulated?

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[2short]

"Doesn't anyone object to being manipulated?"

No. I looked at the features available, and the price asked. It was worth it to me, so I bought it. If I got annoyed every time some marketing guy said something about a future product that didn't turn out that way... well, I've better things to do with my time.

The EEE hardwires in some storage. There's a couple ways to plug in more storage that don't even require turning the thing off. If you really must have 200gigs on an internal drive in a 2 lb, under $500 laptop, available today, then the EEE isn't what you want. Then again, the EEE exists, and what you want doesn't. I don't know why you fault the EEE for this.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[aurispector]

Who's faulting the eee? It's a great little machine, if limited. I object a bit to their marketing is all. Besides, how hard would it have been to include an ide interface? I'd buy one, faults and all if I had $400 to blow. The Cloudbook looks better if only so I can fiddle with it.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[2short]

"Who's faulting the eee?"

Gee, I dunno. Maybe the guy who said: "...the eee requires hacking skills to graft in more storage. The eee is too limited in terms of storage..." The EEE isn't limited at all in terms of storage; it's just aware that an internally mounted HDD is not the best for an ultraportable. You can connect to all the storage you could ever want via SD, USB, or network. Out of the myriad ways to attach storage, the EEE offers you several. You've decided to consider only one, one that is a particularly poor choice for an ultra portable, and declare the EEE limited based on it's lack.

"Besides, how hard would it have been to include an ide interface?"
Perhaps you do not appreciate how small the EEE is. There is no room in the case for a hdd. A typical laptop hdd would account for an additional quarter of the EEEs mass, not counting the bigger battery you'd need to spin it.

Re:Posting from my EEE PC...

[Skuldo]

The processor on the Cloudbook is the dealbreaker for me, VIA CPU vs the EEE's Dothan.. hmm tricky.

I do recommend Python for beginners

[MichaelCrawford]

Hmm... I'll look into acquiring an XO.

It happens that I studied Russian in college. After the fall of the Soviet Union, I had a similar idea, not so much to teach kids but to help exisiting Russian software engineers start software businesses so they could trade with the West.

I happened to meet Esther Dyson when she came to speak at Apple, where I worked at the time. She had traveled extensively in Russia, trying to bootstrap the software industry. When I told her my idea, she grabbed my arm and imperatively said "Russia needs you".

But in the end, I never acted on my idea.

I have a good job with a good company, and great coworkers. But I'm getting old, and feeling very concerned about what I'm going to leave behind when I'm gone. I know none of my code is going to outlive me. I'd like to leave more of a legacy than having gotten a lot of other people rich by writing proprietary code for them.

Article is worthless

[OglinTatas]

Here are my impressions, which are also worthless:
The eee certainly is stylish. I really like the hardware hacking you can do with it. I don't like the screen, though--not that it is too small physically, but that the resolution is so low, that text on the screen has to be larger in order to read it, which makes the screen effectively too small. Does that make sense?

My OLPC I really like, though again nothing is perfect. The hardware is top notch (though I have read of keyboard failures, that could happen to any manufacturer). The screen is great, I can read it in bright sunlight, I can flip it around and use it as an "ebook reader"--mostly to read pdf documentation for other software I use. I don't need to read that in direct sunlight, though.

One can't really complain about keyboards designed for children, but both the OLPC's keyboard and the eee (designed for adults) are about the same physical size, which means I can't touch type on either, but the fact that the keys are physically smaller on the OLPC, with a large gap between keys makes the occasional two-key press on the OLPC much less frequent than an eee.

One thing I really HATE, though, about the OLPC is that crappy sugarUI, and the whole activity vs. application paradigm. I also can't stand that file system hierarchies are ignored, and everything is collapsed to a single flat directory. How do I then save things to the correct subdirectory on my usb drive?

There are guides available to boot OLPC into ubuntu, for instance, but so far I've been too lazy to do so, especially since I have other options as far as hardware goes.

Classmate? meh, don't know, don't care. The few online reviews I have seen have not been flattering. The one plus, it doesn't have the sugarUI. The downside? Windows.

My wishlist for an UMPC would be: an OLPC, only slightly wider so it can acomodate a keyboard just large enough for me to touch-type, with ubuntu preloaded. If they make the next-gen eee an inch or so wider for the same reason, only with a decent screen (even if it is not as good as OLPC's) then I would settle for that.

Re:Article is worthless

[MyDixieWrecked]

One thing I really HATE, though, about the OLPC is that crappy sugarUI

When I got to play with an OLPC, the thing that I couldnt' get past was the quality of the keyboard. It's nearly impossible to use for normal tasks; the keys are like soft telephone buttons and require a press rather than a tap. I would hate to use it for any kind of typing or development. Another poster mentioned that you can ssh into it to install software which really seems like the optimal choice. Of course, the SugarUI really isn't designed for a standard linux user and it can be changed (to xfce, for instance), which probably would solve your issue with it.

Software issues aren't a huge deal, especially if they can be fixed via settings changes or any kind of hack. When the hardware itself (shitty display or keyboard or lack or ports) is an issue, the you have a problem. Complaints about the GUI or default installed applications are an easy problem to remedy.

The eeePC's keyboard is also small, but it's usable. I played with my cousin's and found that although the keyboard and screen were both on the small side, it was still a perfectly usable machine for being ultra-mobile and is far more usable than my cell phone (AT&T Tilt) for real work.

My primary likes with the eeePC are the size, weight, and specs for the package. Another notch in the unusably small direction and the machine would be garbage to me, but I think it juuust makes it... although another half inch wider to accommodate a larger keyboard and maybe a larger LCD would have been spectacular.

Re:Article is worthless

[kjshark]

How do you get an olpc ? I went to the site and all I could find was "you can't get them from ebay anymore". I doesn't matter how good they are if all you can do is read about them.

Re:With an XO and having played with a ClassMate..

[sammyF70]

As someone stated earlier : you can install xubuntu (for example) on the XO ... It would save you the trouble of replaceing one "abomination" with another more expensive and slower one. ;)

Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[gelfling]

So why not get a 4 year old laptop? I doubt my T40 Thinkpad is worth more than $350. It has a Centrino 1.5Ghz, (originally 512MB RAM since doubled), a CDRW/DVD player, built in 802.11b (easily replaced with a $4 PCCard adapter, an 80GB drive. Plus it's not a clunky heavy machine like am R41 Thinkpad, albeit a 7 year old could easily drop it.

And for what it's worth, GAMERZ D00DZ at /., my Fortune 50 company has decided not to upgrade any machines >900Mhz for at least another year. So if that's good enough for corporate apps it's good enough for 7 year olds. In other words you could get a 5 year old laptop worth maybe $300 or slightly less and compare that to one of these machines.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[NiceGeek]

Any of those 4-5 year old laptops as small and as rugged as the eee or the OLPC? No? Thanks for playing.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[gelfling]

No but ruggedness shouldn't be a key driver in the decision process. Why? Because you don't actually know what those requirements look like. For every 7 year old who drops a laptop there's probably some third world kid who's going to drop it in the river or have to wrestle it away from a dingo or something. In other words, rugged is as rugged does.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[NiceGeek]

I disagree...and in fact the OLPC is designed with easily user-replacable parts. I doubt you could show me a 4-5 year old laptop that a 10 year old could fix by themselves.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[gelfling]

Those are actually fairly minor engineering tweaks. Any cash register in America has a water resistant keyboard I bet. And those are designed for people who can barely read. I have a rollup rubber keyboard around here. I bet it costs $8-10 to make, tops. As far as the power is concerned, what of it? A 6-cell LION should work at least 90 minutes. By throttling the system down aggressively you could stretch that to several hours. The reason most people hate battery life is because of the performance they demand out of the machine. Temper that a bit, use C7 processors, etc and you have a very power miserly machine.

Look the point is this, in order to come up with a cheap durable functional laptop you really don't have to reinvent it. Seriously, how expensive would it be to retrofit a foam shell around your laptop to make it more bump resistant? $7. You don't need a specially designed machine that's as closed down and limited as a cell phone either.

The EEE is a commercial product which means they're trying to maximize their margin on it, however small that is. That means that compared to a XO type machine which is not intended to make money, the EEE either has self limited functions and capabilities or it costs slightly more than it should. This is really what doomed the OLPC project from the start - this need to create some kind of revolutionary leap forward when none is needed. You could have spent the money creating a foundation to gather up old laptops, refurbing them, applying whatever cost effective field tweaks you could and sending them back out. Is it perfect? No. But it could have been running for a year already. And guess what, even when I drop a laptop it's still broken. Misuse happens and resilience is not guaranteed.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[LWATCDR]

Well add in maybe $45 for a new battery you would still have a Notebook that weighed more than the eee, was bigger, and took longer to boot.
Is it a better system than an eee? Yes for some tasks but not for other.
I have a Thinkpad and I love it. The screen is great but it weighs too much for me to carry with me every where. The EEE is so small and light that I could see taking it with me everywhere. My wife would love one to put in her purse as well.
It all comes down to portability.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[mollymoo]

Why does the number of Li-Ion cells matter[1]? Are Li-Ion cells so commoditised now that they're only available in a single capacity? I can understand individual manufacturers sticking to a particular cell capacity for economies of scale, but I don't see why that would necessarily translate across manufacturers. A 6-cell 1.2Ah battery would have lower capacity than a 3-cell 3Ah battery. It's most meaningful when discussing battery capacity to talk in terms of how much energy they can deliver, with watt-hours being the preferred unit (because joules are too tiny).

[1] Beyond providing an acceptable voltage.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[Antique Geekmeister]

4 year old laptops tend to have miniscule resources, worn out components, and lack the resouces to run recent software. I know, I'm using one right now that was mid-range four years ago and now only use because it's paid for, and I have external USB hard drives and DVD drives for other reasons. I wouldn't invest any money in repairing, much less replacing it, because components are starting to fail.

Investing $300 for such a device, rather than a new machine with a warranty, is begging to waste a lot of money and time.

Re:Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop

[smallmj]

That's exactly what I did. I picked up a Dell C400 with a P3 1Ghz on ebay for $200. I've since doubled the RAM to 512 MB, and a miniPCI Intel 2915 and this thing runs great. Its about 3.5 pounds with a 12" screen and a usable keyboard. Why pay more?

Funny you mention Python.

[SharpFang]

While you CAN access the console, install vim, gcc, even maybe Eclipse (if you add a pendrive to fit it), and develop any 'adult' software on XO, it IS designed and built to teach Python.

Almost all apps in Sugar are written in Python and their code is readily available and freely editable from inside Sugar. They are safely sandboxed so you won't break anything permanently, but you're encouraged to modify existing ones and write new ones - using the libraries in the system.

The laptop is meant to reveal its layers to the kid as the kid's experience grows. First - games and activities accessible by big, friendly buttons. Then, two of the activities are different programming toys - procedural, building program from bricks, and event-driven one. You gain basics of programming. Then you press a specific button and you get the source of the underlying app. At first you learn by modifying it, editing it - change colors, change texts, maybe move things around a bit. The python code is clean and well commented. Then you can try your own "hello world" and write your own python software that will run under Sugar. As you become expert at Python, you'll learn to use the mysterious "terminal" thing and write without GUI, download other libraries and languages. Nothing is unavailable, but to make sense of some parts you need experience in the easier ones. A 6yo who just begins to learn reading won't find Python sources very interesting, and won't mess with them at least until the brick-language becomes too limiting.

Re:Funny you mention Python.

[fahrbot-bot]

XO, it IS designed and built to teach Python.

When they get older, they can get a real computer and learn Perl :-)
[Hey, it's Monday!]

XO Won That Hands Down

[immcintosh]

I've been reserving judgment against Intel in its battle against the XO, but after looking at that, it really seems that Intel is just using its market power to shove a pretty inferior product down people's throats. I mean, if I were going to spend money on one of those right now, I'd definitely go for the XO--it just seems cool. The Classmate just looks like a bulky XP box that brings nothing interesting to the table, and the Eee really isn't targeted at the same market anyway as I understand. Bias? Maybe, but it seems pretty clear to me which one had the most thought go into the design.

EeePC - Great for remote linux use

[TiberSeptm]

I was extremely skeptical about the usefulness of the EeePC until I got the change to use one for a day. I played around with the cheapest one, the 2G surf, and was surprised to find out that it was a lot more than some simple toy computer. If I were a more experienced Linux user, then this would not have been a surprise to me. While the EeePC performs its basic built in tasks acceptably and serves as a nicely-light email and web browsing machine (amazingly actually able to handle hulu streams), it was in playing with its command line that I began to realize its potential. Using the command line I was able to SSH into our university's engineering servers and remotely run programs like maple, matlab, and the gimp. Our nearly-ubiquitous and extremely robust wireless network combined with having access to our campus's "virtual computing lab" made for better performance than I get on my $1500 laptop. While the performance won't be nearly as good for my home linux machine, the EeePC will be the computer I have on me at campus from now on. With the virtual computing lab here it's like having a remote controlled dual xeon work station for only 300 bucks.

I love my EeePC

[dskoll]

I have not seen the OLPC, but I love my EeePC.

It starts up and shuts down incredibly quickly. Everything "just works". I can run all my important tools like OpenSSH, OpenVPN, privoxy, etc. without any hassles. And Xandros did a pretty good job with the interface (though I tend to live in a terminal most of the time anyway.)

And 920g is so light I take it with me everywhere; I sometimes forget it's in my briefcase.

You have been heard...

[feranick]

Quote: "If they make the next-gen eee an inch or so wider for the same reason, only with a decent screen (even if it is not as good as OLPC's) then I would settle for that." http://eeesite.net/2008/03/asus-announces-next-generation-eee-pc.html

I've used the EeePC & OLPC

[SalesEngineer]

I put this comparison up weeks ago, mostly for friends who were debating which one to purchase ... http://siliconchef.com/2008/01/31/subnotebook-gladiators-part-2/ Overall I think the EeePC is the more flexible unit for the typical computer user. The OLPC has some great features and concepts, but casual use is limited by design features that make it great for the 3rd world market.

I want to ride my bicycle

[Scrameustache]

Roads are obsolete technology. There are millenia-old Roman roads still in use today.

Re:No, it's not a 4-5 year old laptop

[ubuwalker31]

A 5yr old laptop is not comparable. My Eee is a snappy device, and all of the components, including the battery, look and work like new.

The processor is a 900Mhz underclocked Celeron M ULV 353 made in late 2004. So, thats 3+ year old tech...not to mention 512 of RAM and a solid state hard drive and a modern linux OS with great hardware support for wireless, etc.

The Asus that I am working on now is light and portable and small, something that did not exist 5 years ago. Even my fiancee can use it out of the box. It easily fits into her pocketbook, or into my already overstuffed briefcase.

Plus, the styling is sleek and modern, and gets ooos and aaas from geeks and Mac fanboys alike.

eeeuser.com

[Count_Froggy]

I agree adding apps to the eee delivered 'easy' mode is more difficult than it ought to be. But remember, Asus thought they were including all the apps their target audience would need. Not the first company to be wrong and it won't be the last to make this mistake! A suggestion for you, if you haven't found it yourself:

http://eeeuser.com/
There are forums, a wiki, and a large body of developers with solutions to many problems. For example, there is a developer with a set of Launcher tools that makes it much easier to add apps to the 'easy' mode.
I agree, different target audiences; different compromises made.

Re:eeeuser.com

[mollymoo]

Asus thought they were including all the apps their target audience would need.

Perhaps they did. Linux geeks are not their target audience. Photoshopped blondes on beaches are.

Elonex One

[lobiusmoop]

Another interesting low-cost ultraportable recently announced is the Elonex ONE. It costs 100 UKP (about $200). It's really just a 7 inch digital photoframe design with keyboard, mice, Linux and wifi grafted on, but looks pretty interesting nonetheless.

OPLC isn't chroma fixed.

[DrYak]

1.44 million fixed-chroma/variable-intensity picture elements, vs. 1.08 million for the OLPC screen.

OLPC's screen isn't chroma fixed.

The other screens give you either 800x600 color pixels or 2400x600 subpixel with ugly color smearing on the antialasied edge (I just can't stand subpixel rendering. I find the color effects ugly) and non-square pixels (of course, each subpixels is a vertical rectangle wide 1/3 of its height).

OLPC's screen is either approx. 600x450 color pixels (in transflective mode).
Or 1200x900 actual black'n'white pixels when in ebook mode (in reflective mode), no subpixel color artefacts, and high resolution mode has approx. square pixels.

When displaying plain text, OLPC's display is better, more accurate and less power hungry.

Re:OPLC isn't chroma fixed.

[poot_rootbeer]

OLPC's screen isn't chroma fixed.

A pixel on the OLPC screen can be (at most) a shade of red, OR a shade of green, OR a shade of blue. (This is in transflective mode -- chroma isn't discernible in reflective-only mode.)

Howeer, given how dense the pixels are, any triad of adjacent R, G, and B pixels can be perceived as one larger full-color pixel. If those three "sub"pixels are aligned horizontally, you get an effective resolution of 400x900; aligned vertically, you have 1200x300. Have every 3x2 block of "sub"pixels represent 2 "regular" pixels, and you have 800x450.

Best of all, the developer doesn't have to think about any of this, unless he or she wants to. The display appears as a simple 1200x900x12bit framebuffer to software, and the display controller handles all the dirty work of turning it into something that will look pretty onscreen.

Re:OPLC isn't chroma fixed.

[DrYak]

OLPC's screen isn't chroma fixed.

A pixel on the OLPC screen can be (at most) a shade of red, OR a shade of green, OR a shade of blue. (This is in transflective mode -- chroma isn't discernible in reflective-only mode.)

The transflective vs. reflective mode is exactly what I was referring to in a simplified manner.
The pixels are either 1 of the 3 primary additive color or are blank'n'white (depending on the mode) thus when doing hi-resolution rendering in e-book mode, you have a nice clear blank'n'white picture. no color smearing all over the edges of the text's font.

Also the "several way to pack sub-pixels into color pixels" you mention is an interesting feature too, specially if it is handled automatically by the graphic cards. That means that, unlike classic LCDs, OLPC's display could have much more "native" resolutions (whereas on a classic LCD, you get crisp resolution only on integer divisors of the native resolution).

Yes, buy a 2nd hand laptop

[fyoder]

So why not get a 4 year old laptop? I doubt my T40 Thinkpad is worth more than $350. For non-geek regular mortals that would be a great idea, speaking as an xo owner just about the xo. I love my xo, but so much of that is pure geek appeal. I have no problem zipping around on the command line getting it to do what I want, rather than what it's designer's intended, which is for it to be a classroom appliance used by meshed up flocks of kids. Given what an xo costs on ebay, which seems to be about what G1G1 participants paid, and given that most adult geeks are going to want to buy an SD card for it, portable usb keyboard, mouse, usb memory stick, possibly usb to ethernet adapter if you can't always use wireless... you can easily spend more than $100 for accessories for this 'hundred dollar laptop'. Unless you're enamoured of the pure geek appeal of this wee green beasty you probably would be better off spending less on a 2nd hand laptop while getting more in terms of processing power, RAM, and storage (though you're unlikely to find anything as rugged).

I, for one, *LIKE* the Sugar UI

[davide marney]

Everyone repeat after me, "It's an education project, not a laptop project."

I have watched several children play around with my XO, and not once has any of them ever asked me how to start or stop an activity using the Sugar UI. Truly, it is a brilliantly simple interface.

Frankly, the Journal is one of the very best parts of the whole thing. The XO remembers everything you do, automatically. You don't have to hit "save" when you've finished writing something, or deal with "files" and "folders" -- kids have no concept of such abstractions. You just use the durn thing, and it records everything for you, silently and efficiently. When you want to go back to what you were doing, you go to your Journal, and bingo, there it is. One click, and you're back in the saddle.

The key point here is to remember that Sugar is for kids. If you want an adult interface, you can install XFCE or your adult-sized distro of choice. Since it's just a standard Linux box, it's really easy to explore.

Re:I, for one, *LIKE* the Sugar UI

[grumbel]

"It's an education project, not a laptop project." I hear that a lot, but for most part it really is a laptop project, a laptop to be used in education, sure, but the hardware and software is pretty much what OLPC is.

Truly, it is a brilliantly simple interface. I wouldn't call it brilliant, at least not right now, it is certainly not bad and having all applications run automatically in fullscreen is a big plus on a small screen, but it still has a long way to go.

Frankly, the Journal is one of the very best parts of the whole thing. In a few month/years, maybe. At the moment the Journal feels still very unfinished and broken. Hardly any Activities provides proper thumbnails or tags/names and thus limit its usefulness quite a bit. What is however worse is that some Activities integration into the Journal is simply completly broken and counter-intuitive. In the simplest case you have something like the Terminal app, which will just fill up your Journal with useless entries. In the worst case you have things like Browse, which will start with a completly empty bookmark collection each time you start it. Having the Bookmarks tied to a Journal entry instead of the Activity itself simply doesn't make much sense. The Journal really needs to keep Activities that create data and activities that just navigate through already existing data seperate, otherwise you just end up in a big mess.

The key point here is to remember that Sugar is for kids. I would disagree with that. There is really nothing in Sugar that is specifically 'for kids'. It is certainly a simplified interface, but that has more to do with the limitations of the hardware then being designed especially 'for kids'. What the Journal does is really not all that different from what Beagle or other Desktop search engines try to do, only that the Journal goes a step further and hides the underlying file-system completly instead of just adding stuff on top of it.

All that said, I like Sugar too, but it still has quite a while to go before it provides a fully smooth experience.

Re:I, for one, *LIKE* the Sugar UI

[TuringTest]

The Journal really needs to keep Activities that create data and activities that just navigate through already existing data seperate, otherwise you just end up in a big mess.

There's really good usability insight in your comment right there. Have you posted it to the OLPC feedback forums?

Re:I, for one, *LIKE* the Sugar UI

[davide marney]

Hey, some pretty good insights, here. You've convinced me that saying Sugar is "for kids" is not quite on the mark. I guess I would amend it to something like, "Sugar is for people who may never have used a computer before (and may not be able to read yet)". In short, it's a beginner's interface.

I also agree that the Journal is far from perfect -- a complaint that I could levy against a lot of the software on the G1G1 XO, actually -- but I can see where they're trying to go with it, which is admirable.

Thanks for the comments.

Appearance

[RazzleDazzle]

Is it just me or do the first two look like Fisher Price kids toys?

Re:No, it's not a 4-5 year old laptop

[pimpimpim]

I have been thinking about a ~ 300 euro second hand X31 and was checking e-bay for that when in the mean time the EEE arrived. First of all: power management and other driver issues. I want to use linux, I actually need it for my job (lucky me). I know no single person who has managed to get correctly working power management on a laptop. Whereas the EEE just bloody works! The power button activates a nice simple menu with several options that all work. (Note: going to sleep mode while on an external screen resets the screen resolution when waking up, bugger). Also: sound works out of the box, video works out of the box, the web camera works, and the skype 2.0 beta you can get from the eee repository enables skype video chat. I've spent enough time hopelessly configuring files, searching the web, reading man pages, to just want a machine that requires no work for its basic functioning. If I want, I can search around and tweak it to my needs, but I don't have to. That, and the fact that you don't know what a second hand laptop has been through (how long until it breaks, scratches on the screen, etc). And second hand laptops are ridicilously expensive, especially if you want a desired one like the X31 or an exclusive one like the panasonic toughbook.

A personal point is that I believed already for a long time that something like the eee should be made, simple hardware, low computing power, but full computer capabilities, especially video out (not a PDA with a keyboard). I just had to have one. Typing from it now!

The Geek and the Fountain of Youth

[westlake]

they instead blew their 5 million buying buses that kneel to let disabled passengers on

No one remains 20-something forever.

Not everyone lives in an environment that is benign year round.

The heat and humidity here last summer was punishing and dangerous even for those in fit condition. Last week the temperature fell to five degrees with winds gusting to 45.

The rail corridor or loop doesn't solve the "last mile" problem.

You have to deliver a realistic alternative to the automobile as point-to-point transportation.

FYI, XO touchpad needs to be recalibrated

[mbessey]

The XO touchpad seems to need recalibration from time to time. There's a magic key sequence to do that:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Recalibrating_Touchpad

I find this helps a lot when I'm having touchpad issues. Supposedly, the next revision of the hardware will fix this.

Re:With an XO and having played with a ClassMate..

[Skrynesaver]

Sugar is an abomination all to itself.

You may not like Python as a language for real world use, I know I don't, however it does have a place in a teaching environment and that is the objective of the XO, to be a teaching tool, not a standard desktop distro.

For personal use I'd choose the Eee but for a kid I'd probably choose the XO as it's designed deliberately as a route into learning to take advantage of the machine. A real world implementation of "The computer is the game"(Tom Christiansen) if you will.

OLPC and Sugar

[Chemosabe]

I just received an OLPC, and having played with the machine for less than a day, i also must applaud the Sugar dev crew. It is intuitive, and invites to further exploration. Only thing i really miss is a progress bar of some sort, or maybe a hourglass pointer, or something. It is a slow machine, and sometimes it is difficult to see why the machine stops up. Cool machine, though, and refreshing to not have to relate to the xerox/mac desktop paradigm that everyone else uses.

From the MC...

[adam.skinner]

What about the young ladies illustrated primer?

Tell me more about your world

[elrous0]

I'm curious to know more about your world--where infrastructure such as roads aren't ABSOLUTELY VITAL to even the most basic economic development. Here in mine; no roads = no industry, no jobs, no development, no hope. No company in their right mind is going to locate their business in any place where there isn't at least a basic transportation infrastructure. And no individual with any sense would live in such a place if they didn't have to (excepting the Ted Kaczynski nutball types).

Roads, electricity, sewage, and plumbing is where you START. If you can't provide those, all the internet access in the world isn't going to help your village (at most, it may help particularly talented individuals to GET OUT of their village).

Because I want to be able to carry it ? :)

[curri]

The eeepc is less than 1Kg (~2 pounds), I think the others are around that. This is a huge difference. Plus, old hardware tends to have problems, especially with movable parts (HD, CD etc). Batteries tend to last very little in old laptops.

My company gave me a Dell Inspiron about 5 years ago (it was decent then :). The battery now lasts less than 1 hour. The fans make terrible noise, and we replaced the HD once. And it weights almost 10 pounds in its bag, which makes it more a luggable than a laptop :)