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2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader
waderoush writes "At a conference sponsored by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation this morning, OLPC founder unveiled the design for the foundation's second-generation laptop. It's actually not a laptop at all — it's a dual-screen e-book reader (we've got pictures). Negroponte said the foundation hopes that the cost of the new device, which is scheduled for production by 2010, can be kept to $75, in part by using low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players."
But can it run Linux?
Negroponte said the foundation hopes that the cost of the new device, which is scheduled for production by 2010, can be kept to $75, in part by using low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players...
... and in part by waiting until 2010 to make it. In two years you'll be able to buy a used first-gen iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle for $75. At least he's aware of it: "Negroponte said the foundation plans to bring out the second-generation device by 2010. By that time, he added, the cost of the original XO Laptop will also have been brought below $100."
Also, the "low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players" bit worries me some, since those displays don't have a particularly high pixel density. Who wants a 7, 8, 9" screen to read from that's only ~720x480? Yeah, it'll work, but it'll be far from ideal.
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Doesn't the OLPC use a lower power screen? How does the battery life with these cheaper, power hungry screens? It would kind of defeat the purpose of this if you could only use it for an hour without plugging it in...
Even if the schools did spend money on these devices, there would be no content to put on them. The same problem exists for the original OLPC project. Luckily they had Open Source software, and were able to get a working machine with no software cost, but I still don't think there's a lot out there in free textbooks. It's a wonder that the US Government just doesn't hire a few people to write some textbooks that they would use in their schools. For gradeschool and even highschool, the material is simple enough that it wouldn't take that much to get the job done, and then they could have textbooks for the cost of the paper, or if they used ebook readers, then copies would be free. Is there any particular reason textbooks are bought from third parties instead of just written once and used in all the schools?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
I have nothing but rage and contempt for Negroponte and the OLPC project. I will not support a project that betrays its contributors by abandoning the principles that motivated them.
Windows on the OLPC is an outrage and clear evidence that the OLPC project is no longer about helping children and only about making money and creating a new form "Microsoft Tax" for the poor and developing nations.
Its bullshit. Its like giving money and time to a charity called "one meal per child" and find out it has decided to use your contribution to bring dollar off coupons for McDonalds happy meals.
I'm just confused by this. My initial gut reaction is that Negroponte wants to completely scrap what came before, and put his own stamp on the project. But that makes no sense, because it was his project, and his stamp was on it already.
They will be able to sell this new device for under $100, this time for sure. Okay, I'll agree that using standard DVD player screens might help. But why two screens then? Isn't the screen the most power-hungry part of the device? The OLPC screen has special power-management features; won't standard screens burn more power? And won't having two screens double the power?
The article spoke of "dual touch screens". At first I thought this meant "multi-touch screens" but now I think it just means both screens will be touch screens. Even so, how do you make a standard DVD player screen into a touch screen?
And once again. Why two screens? Yes, it looks more like a book. Big deal. This dual-screen design has a hinge! It's got to be easier and cheaper to make a slab tablet device, with maybe a hinged cover (note that a cover has no electrical connections and need not break a waterproof seal).
So, no keyboard; just an onscreen virtual keyboard. I'm guessing no onboard camera, since none was mentioned and they are being aggressive about price. Not one word about openness of software stack... Negroponte just doesn't care anymore, I guess.
The OLPC project hasn't just jumped the shark. They went out and found a new shark and they are jumping over it now.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I have thought the same myself - surely basic texts need not change much from year to year, and big markets like Texas and California have to spend enough on textbooks that the cost of writing them "in-house" would be cheaper than purchasing them.
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean the government isn't brainwashing you via their "official" textbooks.
Be careful what you ask for.
Check out WikiBooks. They aren't quite there yet, but some of their stuff is quite good - and being a wiki, your inputs are encouraged.
With cheap laptops/ebook readers on the horizon, and projects like WikiBooks / Project Gutenberg I am hopeful that we are only a few years from prolific material availability.
Also, slightly off topic - but since you mentioned schools I'd like to refer you to Lockhart's Lament. Do we even really need text books?
Why does it have to be all bound up nicely? In college many of my "books" were professor notes that were essentially photocopies printed out on plain paper with cheap plastic binding - cost maybe $5.
Have students pay for the printing and the taxpayers pay for the content.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Given how far the US dollar has slipped against other currencies $150 laptop would be close to a $100 laptop in 2000. Parts and labor in Asia is becoming more expensive when priced in US dollars.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
> Textbooks are clearly a lucrative business...
Exactly. You could get the top experts to put out free ebook texts that were total works of art, where not a single complaint could be lodged against them and school districts would still buy texts from the usual suspects. Too many bribes to overcome.
Think it through. Go examime what states (just in the US) spend on texts and imagine how much less exensive it would be for them to pool a fraction of that money into paying quality experts to write really good sections/chapters/units/etc. on every topic, illustrated by top notch artists and have all the supplementary materials created, all as works for hire and then released into the public domain as official government publications. Then each school district could pick and choose the chapters they want and either have em published on demand or loaded onto ebook readers. Either option would be far less expensive than what they currently pay. And since only the chapters actually being used would be printed, kids wouldn't be lugging around so much dead weight.
Doing it this way would mean that after the initial expense was sunk only minor revisions would be needed in successive years. But it would be a net financial win in the FIRST set of textbooks issued to students and all of the current fights over textbook content would instantly become local issues amendable to the local political process, thus the warfare would end.
But what I just proposed is totally self evident, so that it doesn't happen and has no realistic chance of happening means the fix is in.
Democrat delenda est
> It saddens me that my $200 is going to be going toward 67 Windows licenses instead of something useful.
The truly sad part is that it is just so obvious that the fix is in at OLPC. If it were true that they were having trouble getting acceptance because of Linux, and that a 'product' OS was needed to close deals, I can believe that part. The real world has idiots in it. But Steve offered em OS X for zero dollars and they refused on the ground it wasn't open source.
And I remember the way they argued so irrationally when anyone suggested a non x86 CPU to lower power consumption when the ONLY reason to put an x86 in a machine like that was to keep the door open to Windows.
Democrat delenda est
Well, after he sold OLPC 1.0 to Microsoft, how can he trump that for OLPC 2.0? Easy: sell out to Amazon. The device may be $75, but the DRM will be priceless. Instead of running Sugar on Linux, it sounds like it may run Amazon's reader on WinCE.
Seriously, Mr. Negroponte, make up your mind what you want people to volunteer for. An eBook reader? A constructionist learning device? A low-cost laptop to sell stripped down Windows versions to the developing world? When you figure it out, maybe the volunteers will come back.
But don't bet on it.
The big problem is that they leave out the content. Creating textbook content is key and requires a serious investment to match the curriculums. Yes, textbooks are expensive (and profitable), but much of the cost is in creating the content and customizing the content for each school. The problems with eBooks isn't the hardware it's having enough content. Amazon is semi-close with Kindle. Reading for pleasure will likely never happen with eBooks but it could work for education with enough of a commitment.
Negroponte's close but, as usual, the Media Lab orientation is light on content and high on concept.
I agree with you to a very large degree.
However, the revolution doesn't have to come with eBooks. Many schools make extensive use of publishers such as Dover Books, who specialize in printing out-of-copyright material very inexpensively.
If good public-domain textbooks were available, an entire industry would quickly spring up to print these books as cheaply as possible. Printing doesn't have to be expensive, and a good book can last through several generations of student... I've been a big critic of the OLPC project, primarily because these free texts don't yet exist, and because their existance would allow us to print dozens of books for less than the cost of an XO.
Many educators are fed up with the "New Maths" that have been shoved in their faces, and I imagine that there (hopefully) will be some sort of grassroots effort to build a solid base of public-domain educational texts. Although I wouldn't be terribly keen on the government literally "writing history", I'm sure many state governments would be willing to fund such an effort.
Frankly, I preferred the old texbooks, and the traditional methods of teaching to the new stuff that was forced on us. Writing a textbook that teaches basic concepts, and provides a few homework questions for reinforcement isn't rocket science. "The rest" should be left up to the Instructor to fine-tune to their own individual students.
Also, thanks to Wikipedia, much of the framework is already in place. It should be fairly trivial to restructure (and verify) Wikipedia content into a series of educational textbooks, given that most of the hard work has already been done.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose