OLPC's "Give 1 Get 1" Comes To Europe

Christoph Derndorfer writes "Last year OLPC's XO-laptop was among the hottest Christmas gadgets thanks to the organization's G1G1 program, where you could donate $399 to give one XO-laptop to a child in the developing world and receive one yourself in return. However in 2007 the program was only available for US and Canadian citizens. This year's program, which takes off November 17, is also available to citizens in the EU member states, Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey. This is certainly awesome news for all the OLPC / Linux / gadget enthusiasts here in Europe! P.S. Before anyone asks, these XOs will come equipped with the child-friendly Sugar platform, which is based on Fedora 9, and not Windows XP."

Comments

Disillusion

[XB-70]

I bought into the dream last December. Sent in my money and got a unit in Jan/Feb (I forget). I played with the unit like crazy - learning all its idiosyncrasies. Then the whole OLPC program started to unravel. Key people dropped out. The O/S and Sugar had not evolved much as of June '08. OLPC sent ONE (1) person to Peru for a roll-out of thousands of machines - many of which had problems or needed upgrades. Intel got involved - and dropped out... and now Microsoft...

-I have managed to upgrade the software exactly twice - a complex, virtual dance of death if the upgrade doesn't take.

-The machine is DOG slow.

- The keyboard is useless for high school kids.

- There is not enough memory for much A/V.

- Connecting to WiFi is counter-intuitive if security is involved.

- There is no native printer support.

Quite frankly, I'm sceptical that this thing can fly long-term because other, full-fledged products are catching up (ASUS) to the OLPC price-point will fully loaded Linux on a better machine.

Now, the positives - battery life has been amazing. The screen is truly a wonder and great as a reader flipped over and turned sideways.

One issue troubles me: In this and other projects, no-one has solved the problem of supplying internet connectivity in remote areas. I know that Google is launching a constellation of Ka band satellites - but they will be commercial. One idea that I saw was to use a WiFi server on either buses or motorcycles. Local servers pump email etc. to the mobile servers which then dump the data when they get to a hot-spot - and visa-versa. Sort of a sneakernet for the back woods.

I'm concerned about the entire support infrastructure. Further to that, why don't these things come pre-loaded with regional Wikis and the full slate of curriculae as set out by the country involved?