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

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?

[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?

[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: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

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.

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]

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.

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.

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: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: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?

[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.

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: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.

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.

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*.

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.