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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."
If and when I get a Job after being laid off due to the bum economy I'll really think about this. It's a great program and I'd love to tinker with one.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
Hi,
I don't mean to troll.
I am not sure how well the device has aged with all the new netbooks that are available.
A few features that remain unmatched:
- screen that works in sunlight
- ebook mode (although I can read a PDF on my EEE and it looks great)
- more rugged than other computers
- battery life (?)
- hand crank (did they provide it this time?)
- wifi mesh
Also, is there a guarantee that the OLPC you donate will not be running XP? I would not be too happy about sponsoring Microsoft...
I am not shopping this year but I am afraid I would not choose the OLPC. Maybe I would get it for my kid though, I wonder.
Before anyone asks, these XOs will come equipped with the child-friendly Sugar platform
If Sugar is child friendly, to whom is Windows friendly towards?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I am based in the UK but ordered an XO in the initial G1G1 programme and had it delivered to a friend in the US who then sent it on to me here in London. All I can say is that the experience was an absolute debacle. If you check the forums of OLPC News you can see just how bad it was - repeated broken promises as to delivery dates, support staff who couldn't provide any answers and an end product less than what was initially promised (e.g. no separate power generating devices).
I was and still am a supporter of the OLPC; whilst the product itself is not aimed at me, even still I think it is a great computer and a lot of fun to use. I give them full credit as well for creating the "netbook" market from nothing. However, the G1G1 experience turned a lot of people off the OLPC organisation. It is hard to have confidence that they can execute their mission when they couldn't even get the logistics right for a first world country. I just hope we don't have a repeat of that this time around.
Few years ago the OLPC was my wet dream, but it took soo long for it, to be available for buy, that it's plain crazy. The Eee and ASUS stuff appeared. But they are all plain junk - very heavy, and very short battery life. OLPC at least is rechargeable...
But, oh well, fortunately now there is Pandora, I have ordered one and got to wait until december to receive it. I think that Pandora is revolutionary to Portable / Personal Micro Computers as Sinclair ZX Spectrum was at its own time. I may be wrong, but there's something in it. So it might be true. Time will tell.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Shame, I already ordered a Dell Mini 9.
I'm still waiting for the Buy One, Taunt One program. Where you buy a laptop loaded with Linux, and another is sent to a Microsoft employee. Complete with the Firefox home page set to the last Slashdot story bashing Microsoft.
Naturally the packages will be addressed to:
Micro$oft,
One Micro$oft Way,
Redmond, WA 98052-6399 U.$
so when they want our money, then it is Linux configured. Otherwise, they take MS. Hmmmm. Thanx, but no thanx. Besides, it is the west that is hurting bad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think the idea is great and thinking about buying one as a xmas present for a 5 year old kid. Is this something for a child that age?
What about pricing? $399 or â 312. I thought it would be a $100 dollar laptop, so I'm buying 4 (1 for me, 3 for OLPC)?
Did they beef up the spec or is this the same version with just a new OS?
What power has law where only money rules.
G1G1 was great when people thought they were helping a non-profit promote free software and open hardware throughout the world. Now that that dream is over and OLPC is primarily promoting MS, who cares about OLPC?
Starting November 17 Amazon.com will off the OLPC http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&me=A34NLXJLC88VVS. Quite appropriate since it was Jeff Bezos that came up with the buy-two-get-one program.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
Great. One year after the US and Canada, we in Europe should be pleased to be elegible for a program that was a flop in the US, at a moment when the hardware was up to date.
Now OLPC wants us to get hyped for a piece of hardware that has become old and irrelevant, just because they couldn't include us at the moment when the offer would have been interesting because it consisted of some relevant hardware?
Sorry, for me it's again 'too little, too late'. If the OLPC would have included us last year, I would have gladly donated, but I'm sick of being percieved as a second-class citizen that only matters when there are problems to be solved.
I've never understood the coy attitude of the OLPC. Why do they go to such lengths to make it difficult for the average Joe to buy one of these things? A couple of years ago this would have been the ideal stocking filler for kid with nerd parents. Actually getting these devices into the hands of the geeks who were clamouring for one would have benefited the project in so many ways. For one thing, by allowing such a group to buy the things, they could have begun to cultivate a hobbyist development scene for the platform.
What possible harm could it have done to make it available to anyone who wanted one?
It's probably too late for the project now anyway. It's lasting legacy might be some awareness of the importance of IT to developing nations in addition to helping kickstart consumer interest in netbooks.
From now on this should be referred to as "pulling an Amiga". I.e. killing off a good idea by restricting access.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
As one who participated in the first G1G1 I can attest that they were totally unprepared to handle the orders. It was a huge mess. That said, it was eventually made right, the little green guy showed up, and although the initial software kind of sucked, the new build is a lot, LOT better.
And as a bonus it came with a year of T-Mobile Hotspot access free, which is nice.
I presume the new OLPC this year will not look like the 2.0 "all touch" dual-screen design previewed in May?
Actually somre more info re: the new G1G1 is here. From TFA, looks like Amazon will be handling the orders this time, which should be a major improvement. Is T-Mobile going to throw in like last time?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
To make the OLPC laptop possible, they had to get help from big manufacturers. These manufacturers probably made it a condition that the market in high income countries won't be ruined by extremely cheap laptops. So you can get one of these laptops, but only if you pay a first world price for it. It doesn't matter that they have to build two for that price, as long as you pay the higher price and only get one.
I'd love to ditch my laptop and replace it with an XO just for the cool-value at conferences, but I need to give presentations. Any way to get SVGA out of it?
I piss off bigots.
and neither is Russia! but alas, i am not surprised.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
hehe, and after reading the summary, i realized, neither is Turkey.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
Fact check: Turkey is NOT an EU member.
-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?
*** Don't be dull.***
They had some problems shipping laptops to everyone that ordered one, with a whole lot of people complaining about not getting their shipment. It wouldn't surprise me if they stopped shipment because they couldn't keep up with the demand.
repeated broken promises as to delivery dates, support staff who couldn't provide any answers and an end product less than what was initially promised (e.g. no separate power generating devices).
No shit. A client of mine ordered *TWO* G1G1 packages, and they never showed up. Repeated calls to the company resulted in: "we lost your order", but they couldn't even figure out how to refund his money. He ended up having to do a chargeback.
Given that loads of people never got theirs, what do you think the chances are that the *other* party in the whole "G1G1" scam*cough*, I mean, "program", got theirs?
Please help metamoderate.
One of the big concerns is the inability to provide large-scale support (hardware warranty, returns, software mishaps). The average-Joe would expect this, as a lot of them did even with the G1G1 program. Support for new schools usually came from people who were trained by the OLPC staff, and who continued support after the staff had left. It would be a logistical nightmare to try to provide support to thousands of people all over the country, something this non-profit didn't want to get involved with.
Why no info were disclose? Are there any different?
Last years's G1G1 does not count an success by some means.
Check out the price on ebay.
With all the bad experiences related, I thought I'd add my good experiences. Ours came a week before Christmas. It worked great. It is as fast and has as much memory as the email/imap/vpn/squid server used by one of my clients remote offices. The only thing that is too slow is the Flash plugin that runs Webkins - but I don't really want my daughter playing Webkins all the time anyway. With current releases, I get 5 hour battery life - better than any full size laptop at our house. The 10" screen is razor sharp and the sun mode and ebook mode are great. It is a big hit with the kids in the neighborhood. I use it myself a lot because I can curl up with it in an easy chair.
The bad news: It took some updating and playing to get to the above. The keyboard is too small for an adult, but USB keyboards work fine. Here are the things that made it slow as delivered:
1) The FFS2 filesystem is slow and eats a lot of memory. Running from a USB drive - even a fast 8GB flash drive - is much faster. Doing so is poorly supported as of yet - although there is a test project for a SDHC card OLPC distro based on Fedora 9. There are also Ubuntu ports to run from USB or SDHC card.
2) Adding swap space (via USB or SDHC card) is a big improvement.
3) The Sugar software is vastly improved in speed between the version delivered in last years G1G1 and the current 767. Each update brought speed improvements in Sugar. The applications were always reasonably fast (except flash plugin for browser and memorize).
4) The first update to support suspend to ram also removed power from the SDHC card without the proper hardware protocol, and then wrote over the partition table on wakeup. NOT cool. (Apparently fixed now. Moral - remove SDHC before testing base OLPC updates.)
Note that G1G1 will be distributed by Amazon this year. They should do a better job than the volunteers did in last years.
Normally, products drop in price as competitors
show up. They are also now XP-tainted (even if not
shipping it in G1G1) and not the "new thing".
OLPC is going to be sorely disappointed this year.
They've never been the type to accept reality.
You sound like a zealot looking to promote
your ideology, not to promote software freedom.
(your ideology being that poor people should be
helped, and that this should be done by providing
them with free-as-in-beer electronic junk)
Making poor people depend on a for-profit
software vendor is an "interesting" ideology.
The hardware is nothing nice by 2008 standards,
but it isn't hopeless. It's like 1996 to 2000.
The problem is that a bunch of dumb-ass morons
decided to write the entire GUI in Python. WTF?
Then, since that wasn't stupid enough, they used
lots of message passing and SVG graphics.
I've never seen a good explanation or excuse for
this, or even an admission of the mistake. Sugar
developers do all sorts of nasty performance hacks
yet are unable to confront the real problems.
They also complain that they haven't been able to drive prices down because they haven't been able to achieve sufficient volume.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
My daughter's at school in the UK, so I bought one, sat through the delays and more delays (told her that there was a "late Christmas present" coming, but I wasn't quite sure when) then FedEx'ed it over to her. FedEx alone cost close to half the "value" of the thing - and then the UK bastards wanted her to pay customs duty too. Teach me to ship it in the original box, I guess...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
OLPC is *NOT* primarily promoting MS.
In fact, I don't think anyone at the OLPC core dev team is actively doing windows-related work on the XO. All work is being done on Sugar XO-OS.
It's Microsoft's problem to make XP work on the XO.
The MS thing was a compromise for governments who inisited on computers that run XP. Basically, it's more of "hey, if you want to run a different OS on the XO, it's your machine". The OLPC folks aren't the ones maintaining the XP version.
http://www.object404.com
I'll give them $200 for mine and they can keep the spare.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Given OLPCs backflips on Free Software being included do not support this if your intent is to help spread Free Software. They could just as easily turn around and ship your "give one" with windows. And really who wants to give the "gift" of Microsoft? Well done Nicolas. You were teaching them to fish, but ultimately caved and gave them their first Microsoft fillet. Not only have you let down those you sought to help, you've irrevocably destroyed the value of your word. You have no credibility here time to move on.
Duh. Who said it was?
For once, the summary is correct "in the EU member states, Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey." This is a list, meaning "in the EU member states AND Switzerland AND Russia and Turkey", not a definition. If it were, it would use a colon, like "in the EU member states: Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey". I mean, who would imagine that Russia was in the EU (aside from Sarah Palin)?
Because they switched to being windows-bootable. http://bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php
An acronym alone doesn't tell me much.
I piss off bigots.
Even if the project itself hasn't achieved certain goals yet, it has definitely pushed the boundaries and created a whole new format for notebooks. We will get to the $100 laptop one day, and we are alot closer to it today than where a few years back.
Anyway would we have the EEE-PC if it was not for the OLPC???
As the OLPC is nolonger "free", there is absolutely no reason to buy an OLPC instead of an ASUS Eee PC. I lost interest in the OLPC when they lost interest in my efforts. Go Richard!