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Give One Get One Redux, OLPC XO-1 Now On Amazon
404 Clue Not Found writes "The One Laptop Per Child project's XO-1 laptop is once again available to the general public via its Give One Get One promotion, where $400 will buy two laptops, one for the purchaser and one for 'a child in the emerging world.' Having learned from their delivery and fulfillment headaches the first time around, this time they partnered with Amazon.com to handle shipping. But a year after its initial release, the market has become saturated with Eee-wannabe netbooks from every major manufacturer. Can the XO-1's charitable appeal, unique chassis and dual-mode screen compete with the superior performance and standard operating systems of its newer peers?"
Maybe Amazon should have been involved last year guys.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Last year I couldn't afford to do this despite the good economy.
This year I can't afford to do this due to the lousy economy.
Maybe next year.
If you want to donate a PC you can always just buy a single PC for $199 and not bother with getting one for yourself.
They never wanted to make a machine that can compete with the other laptops. They wanted to make one that'd be good for kids in a 3rd world countries. Not one that'd be great in your living room. The only reason to get one has always been the uniqueness of it, not it's specs.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
How many pads of paper, pencils and books does $199 get? Maybe be of more use than a computer?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
If they just sold the thing for $200, they might get enough volume to get down to the $100 laptop.
The real problem with the OLPC, though, is that it's now a 3 year old design. The OLPC is being overtaken by commercial products.
Having learned from their delivery and fulfillment headaches the first time around, this time they partnered with Amazon.com to handle shipping.
You mean the cases like one of my clients, who ordered two, and received none?
When he called and asked WTF was going on, they couldn't "find" his order, and refused to refund his credit card, despite proof they'd charged him. He ended up having to do a chargeback.
If OLPC couldn't ship 'em to donors, what makes anyone think they're shipping them to kids in the '2nd world'?
Please help metamoderate.
"Can the XO-1's charitable appeal, unique chassis and dual-mode screen compete with the superior performance and standard operating systems of its newer peers?" Would there be Eee wanabees without the XO? The world is a big place, and products (hopefully) evolve with demand. XO is still a good idea and has served a useful purpose. I'm sure that if someone wants to send a competitor oversees to an underprivileged child, that's ok, too.
I'm not a human, but I play one on T.V.
The number 1 problem with the XO-1 is the keyboard. The machine just wasn't made to fit adult hands. For a child, I'm sure everything is perfect, but don't expect to do any large amount of work on it without an external keyboard, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Other than that it's a perfectly comparable to other sub-notebooks. Obviously twice the price of what it should be, but it's extremely light and rugged. It's the ideal machine for anyone wanting to run linux, since the entire machine is completely open, including the BIOS. The dual-mode screen could really be useful for if you want to work outside one day, which is pretty much impossible with my T60.
I don't get it. A laptop that costs $99 each is selling for £275 for two (or £135.50 each) at Amazon, so you would think the extra cost was for shipping, nope, that will be another £50.
£325 in total then.
People are charitable in small ways; A few dollars to a beggar. Copies of Windows XP for libraries. Buying a friend who's broke lunch. That kind of thing. But would you, say, pay 20% more at Best Buy to send a second iPod to a poor starving child in Africa? No. You'd go across the street to Super Electrono Mart and buy it there without the "charity tariff", and maybe use the extra money to buy that broke friend of yours some Burger King. You know, if you were feeling charitable. -_-
Charity isn't a selling point. Cost, reliability, performance -- those are selling points. They'll only be in business as long as they can stay ahead of the competition, otherwise the only thing this enterprise will be good for is tax write-offs and guilting government officials. Not to say there isn't money in that too... But it's not a business model that would survive free market forces.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What charitable appeal? It's turned into a vehicle for spreading Microsoft's hegemony.
You know, while this project is truly a great idea and a very noble cause, they're really bogging themselves down with the way it's being marketed.
On one hand it's good that each sale for the OLPC project sells two laptops, but at the same time they're not in any way shape or form selling to the lower-class and even a lot of the middle class demographics that may need it in more developed countries it's being marketed to. Of course you're going to get sales from wealthy individuals, but think about everyone living paycheck to paycheck that probably doesn't have $200 to just blow on some random "toy" for their kid. Even in the middle-class where they may have the money to spend, but not a huge amount extra... are they really going to spend $400 bucks on an OLPC, or are they going to look at an Eee PC at almost half the cost for some models, or the MSI Wind at just a smidgen more?
Plus there is now a plethora of ultra low-power, low-cost, ultra mobile computers on the market. Again, I love the nobility of the project, but I think it's time to open it up to $200 per computer with optional monetary donation towards another computer. I bet with the extra sales made it will get about the same number of donated PC's abroad while keeping the production numbers up and the project alive. After all, there's no help at all without this project so why not do the best to keep it afloat.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Buy yourself an EeePC through regular channels and send a donation cheque/check to OLPC.
Or just send them a cheque...
Engineering is the art of compromise.
We have the OLPC to thank for this year's Netbook explosion, as manufacturers discovered that there was a real market for modestly spec'd machines in a tiny form factor. Unfortunately, the OLPC looks lame in comparison. It's a great example of how academic projects have difficulty competing in a commercial environment. And, no matter what idealists might proclaim, any time you get into large-scale manufacturing you are forced to operate in a commercial environment. Producing millions of machines "for academic use" requires the same skills as running a for-profit company. You need a sales staff to convince countries to buy the machines by the millions. You need financing for R&D and production. You need hardware and software engineers, and you need a clear roadmap.
Doing this stuff is tougher in academia, and OLPC was hamstrung by a heavy dose of ideology (we've gotta design really clever custom software, make it cute and bleeding-edge, etc.) that commercial manufacturers could side-step. As a result, the OLPC crew futzed around with a very ambitious software framework. They futzed about endlessly tweaking the hardware design. In comparison, Asus actually built a cheap little machine and threw it into the marketplace as a crude first try. It ignited the imagination of manufacturers and consumers alike. Asus is now on their third generation (I think... I've lost track) of netbooks in a little over a year, and others jumped into the fray as soon as they could get their hands on Intel's Atom processor. There is no way that OLPC could keep up with such an aggressive hardware program. The result is that their once revolutionary device now seems quaint.
Spotted on Engadget a few months ago:
$89 laptop
It is extremely basic, but it is at least interesting to see what is possible at the low-end of the laptop market these days. Looks like it would be fine for very basic wifi browsing (wikipedia etc) email and document creation at least.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
...promotion's sales being hurt by netbooks. It seems to me that the majority of OLPC G1G1 sales are going to be to geeks who buy it as a curiosity more than as a machine they will be using every day, or for their kids because it is able to withstand more abuse than a netbook. The OLPC isn't quite being targeted at the same users that netbooks are, and a lot of the netbook market probably will never hear about the OLPC anyway.
Plenty of books on entry level courses of Algebra, English, Physics, etc. that should be free because their copyright should have expired. How much has changed with basic algebra over the past 50 years that we need to pay a publisher $50+ every year for an updated text?
I think your argument is more for instead of giving a laptop to every child, to just give a high quality, internet enabled laser printer to every teacher. I think we could pay for the toner for all the books they will print cheaper than we can replace/repair broken/stolen/lost laptops. Size and weight is not an issue because you only have to carry one chapter for every subject you're taking, stuff it into a 3-ring binder and trade them in for the next chapter as you progress through the school year.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Maybe if you donate a laptop, the kids getting the XOs will figure out how to cluster them and model more than just a malaria cure.
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Its specs make it attractive not for the living room, but for the camp site. I took mine to Starwood and Free Spirit Gathering and Playa Del Fuego, and it was great - easy to recharge off of a 12 volt battery, capable of picking up wifi from one campground's office, resistant to the elements. Hooked it up to my cell phone as a modem, and I could handle any work emergencies that popped up.
For some of us who want a simple, rugged, portable box, it fits the bill nicely. Load XFCE on it rather than (shudder) Sugar, though.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The link to Amazon has as its first picture touting the OLPC being used "From Atse Naod, Nigeria" presumably training tomorrow's scammers.
Before everyone gripes about how lousy a deal the XO is now that the netbooks are out, remember its screen: 1200x900 is a lot more pixels. Mind you, yes, crammed into a much smaller area so the aging-eyes set won't like it, but this is a great machine to use to remote into a bigger, better box elsewhere - and have a reasonably viewable screen in the process.
I've seen netbooks with 10" screens sporting 1024 x 600. That resolution is, like, so 1998.
I'm typing this from Kagando Village, Uganda. I've been touring the local primary and secondary schools here and I can tell you that these children don't need laptops. Forget about the fact that the adults would probably use them instead of the kids if they were brought here. The reason they don't need laptops is because they much more desperately need good textbooks for every year of school. No amount of educational software is going to make up for the fact that the kids don't have good (or usually even enough) textbooks. $200 a kid could EASILY buy every kid here textbooks for every year of their schooling and would be money MUCH better spent. Maybe this isn't the case in other developing countries but here I really don't think that laptops are the answer. It's a nice gimmick and a nice thought but not the right answer.
And perhaps the person who would have discovered how to stop malaria for good dies of malaria, due to lack of medicines now.
Speculation like this doesn't do much good. I can only make a decision for myself, but I prefer to make a donation to a cause where there is a measurable benefit, and not a for profit scheme that hasn't been able to show any benefits for the recipients so far, except burdening them with support expenses they can ill afford.
Anybody else expect to see a rise in Nigerian Barrister scams?
Well, seeings as where the Eee crowd would now have you thinking that any subnotebook is a Eee-wannabe, even tho Compaq, HP, Sony, Apple and Toshiba (and I think that both IBM and Sharp also had offerings too) beat them to the punch as much as a decade earlier, you're going to have a lot of flamebait of this nature.
While the Eee-PC finally makes sense, with wifi being so widely available and the technology being so dirt cheap, they are far from original. But you're going to have a hard time convincing users around here of that. It's like the iPhone... We've had touchscreen smart phones for a while now but anyone who produces them now is somehow an iPhone rip-off.
C'est la vie
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You cannot guarantee that Microsoft will not come along in the future and grant some sort of "sweetheart" deal and "upgrade" these machines to Windows.
I'm considering using the buy one, get one option and then donating the second laptop to a school in my area. I could donate two to third-world countries, but I believe in the "think globally, act locally" mantra. I want kids in my own neighborhood to have access to fun, interesting, educational technology too.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
And perhaps the person who would have discovered how to stop malaria for good dies of malaria, due to lack of medicines now.
Huh? What? Where did anyone suggest diverting medicine dollars to make OLPCs? I've never heard of such a thing.
Speculation like this doesn't do much good. I can only make a decision for myself, but I prefer to make a donation to a cause where there is a measurable benefit, and not a for profit scheme that hasn't been able to show any benefits for the recipients so far, except burdening them with support expenses they can ill afford.
Hmmm, I haven't incurred any support expenses on my kids OLPC. My 11-year-old bricked his but he used his sister's and an old camera memory card to fix it himself.
All that being said, you should spend your money on the things you want to accomplish, and nobody else has any right to dictate those things to you. Good for you, for caring about where your donations go!
Hmmm, I haven't incurred any support expenses on my kids OLPC. My 11-year-old bricked his but he used his sister's and an old camera memory card to fix it himself.
If he fixed it himself it wasn't bricked.
Of course it can compete. It's something that targets a partly intersecting market and utilizes different soft technologies. I'd worry a lot more about someone who is arrriving with their new line of $400 Windows machines.
I truly believe that here in Guatemala we could benefit from the OLPC. I want to get 2, because the true benefits come from having at least 2. Al the fun about sugar is the neighborhood.
Sure there is need for food, sure there is a need for infrastructure for many things. But being able to see the world, even from a small screen can definitely change your world view.
For me, nothing has shaped me, or my carreer that going abroad and studying in the US. Now I now that there is a better way for government to work. I know that my government has to change, and I have the power to change it. I could bring this knowledge to 1 child, even if it's through a small laptop. I'll do it.
Killer app.
Slow, but better than standalone.
If it came in a reasonable colour I'd have one.
Deleted
Given the 'bait-n-switch' move to Windows, the OLPC program has left a bad taste in my mouth. My OLPC sits unused in a pile of electronics gear that 'one of these days' I'll get around to offing on ebay or craigslist.
I liked the idea of it, I liked the technology of it, I really hate the idea of using it to introduce so much of the developing world to Windows. Can you imagine the issues we'll have with the net once the spam/bots manage to hide in the always-on routing chip of an OLPC?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Hasn't it been hijacked by MS ?
The whole point of openness will be undone in the next version and they simply will get a cut down XP so that the best they can do is look for hided excel Easter eggs
It is heavier
Its the other way around, the Eee is 0.9kg, while the XO-1 is 1.5kg and that is actually quite heavy when you try to hold the thing in ebook mode for longer periods of time.
After he attempted (and failed) to run an X86 OS on it, the XO-1 had all the computing capabilities of a brick. Therefore the other children referred to it as "bricked".
Young people often use words in ways that older people do not, I have noticed. I shall endeavor to use less ambiguous language in the future.
He fixed it without adult assistance.
If I follow your reasoning, when I pull the power plug from my computer, it becomes bricked because it also has the computational capabilities of a brick at that moment?
They did go to the "big manufacturer" for the display tech and OEM manufacturing. The problem is that none of the technical innovations of the OLPC remain exclusive to the OLPC. The problem is that sales and distribution outside of Uruguay, Colombia and Peru has been unimpressive - a less charitable word would be "negligible."
Summary of laptop orders
If you rearrange the molecules in a brick you can theoretically produce a computer. Therefore, not even a brick is totally bricked. Furthermore, all computation requires time. Everything frozen in time is bricked, so even supercomputers doing intense computations are bricked when you just consider a moment in time.
Let's say an object A is bricked in a certain time interval T if there is no way to perform a computation using A in time T. Then a 3 GHz computer processor is bricked for T less than 300 ps. Everything is bricked for T=0 and nothing is bricked for T=infinity. Now let Brick(A) be the maximum T such that A is bricked in T. This is the brickness rating of object A. Clearly, Brick(your computer with power plug removed) is less than Brick(computer without a usable OS installed). So your extrapolation is a bit unfounded.
The intersection of charitable people and people designing good computers is not empty, but there are many more people in the second group. Capitalism will do things better, than any group of starry-eyed do-gooders.
And if you say "market failure" — I'll pull out this very case of "$100 laptop" and beat you over the head with it. In the time it took the charity to create their machine (at twice the planned-for cost), the market came up with better machines. Oh, and the charity still needs a capitalist to manage shipping logistics. Wow...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've heard this complaint before. Have you ever considered that the OLPC XO laptop at $200 can hold significantly more than $200 worth of books?
The XO has a built in webcam and microphone. I remember learning how cell phones in remote fishing villages in Peru allowed fisherman to check market prices before selling to the middle men. Imagine doing that while putting the Internet at their fingertips?
The XO is an enabling technology. It won't solve the problems of poor children around the world. But it will enable them to solve their own problems. And I dare say that have a much better idea of the problems and solutions than we do.
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
Just $60 more for a non-Kindle ebook (albeit with a smaller screen), and I get to make a charitable contribution at the same time? Very tempting.
1: Do we get to keep the keyboard?
2: Do we pay for it?
Optimus Maximus
Where is the pull string?
Maybe... just maybe... the OLPC project would get more L's donated if they allowed donors to choose the country to which the donated machine would go.
Is this provided, eg, by the Amazon interface?
If not, does the OLPC project provide it in other ways?
(Forget how it might look, to on-lookers... to maximize the number of kids who get computers, let donors have a bit more control as to destination.)
If you are politically correct and environmentally conscious, you are probably now wiping your ass with the toilet paper made from these perfectly usable books.
I doubt it, glossy paper doesn't recycle like that.
A blog about stuff.
Agreed! The XO isn't just any other laptop, because it supports mesh networking. Even though that isn't very useful now (meshing probably even really won't help the kids that much), and some people probably consider it last year's news, supporting the XO means more people thinking about mesh, and more computers for kids that could use them. So support the XO!
Ok, maybe it isn't really the same thing. However, take a look at this:
HP Computer From 1993
The hardware is somewhere between a laptop and a TI calculator. However, it ran DOS natively, included a PCMCIA expander slot. And in one way it is far superior to current netbooks: it could run for 90+ hours on battery. It just had a slot that you put in off the shelf AA's into it. (I wonder why none of the laptops today do that? Sure, perhaps lower performance than packaged up, but so much cheaper and easy to replace when the life decays.)
...but you lost me at Windows.
Sorry guys... I sooooo wanted an OLPC and was gung-ho on the mission but with with Negroponte selling out the original concept and Krstic having left the project - it's soul is gone.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some GNU zealot (I'd like to shoot some GNUs some time...), but I think so much of the educational mission is lost once the child who owns the machine hits that brick wall that is the closed OS. The whole idea is that you're supposed to be able to explore EVERYTHING about how this wonderful device works and learn what makes it tick - then change it!
I don't care if the software's "free", I just want it to be completely 100% open. That's a mission I can get behind and something that I know would have impacted me as a child. Otherwise, you've just got a glorified game machine for my pirated copy of whatever is popular these days. That's pretty cool from a kid's perspective (given its free) but not a charity I'm gonna support.
Last year I got a G1G1, and i was impressed and amazed with how well it works as a travel machine and reader. I am unable to enjoy sharing between XO rigs as I live quite rurally in California and I haven't managed to hang out with any other XO users. I would like to get my daughter one, however I will definitely wait until the clamshell touchpad design is out. The idea is still good,, even if the statement "a cell phone is not a learning device" from Negroponte did make me want to never ever have anything to do with him again. Along with all the other troubles primarily with follow through and support for the participants abroad.
I was going to point out that I am not trying to argue with you, merely reporting an event as perceived by my children, but suddenly an AC jumped in with possibly the most awesomest post to slashdot I've yet encountered.
Is it too late for me to pretend I wrote that?