OLPC Downsizes Half of Its Staff, Cuts Sugar

One Laptop Per Chewbacca writes "Nicholas Negroponte, the leader of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, has announced that the organization will be laying off half of its staff, cutting salaries of the remaining employees, and ending its involvement in Sugar development. The organization has had serious problems with production and deployment and has been fragmented by ideological debates as Negroponte shifts the agenda away from software freedom and towards Windows. Ars Technica concludes: 'The OLPC project's extreme dependence on economy of scale has proven to be a fatal error. The organization was not able to secure the large bulk orders that it had originally anticipated and fell short of meeting its target $100 per unit price. The worldwide economic slowdown has made it even more difficult for OLPC to find developing countries that have cash to spare on education technology.'"

Comments

Be Warned

[gringer]

If you're changing your original goals (I'm thinking particularly about Sugar here) mid-way through, you'll crash faster.

Re:Be Warned

[thedonger]

Maybe the problem is that their goals are wacky. Here is a blurb from the "Development of Generation 2.0" technology initiative page:

Other detailed goals include:

• Dual 16x9 proportioned sunlight-readable touch screens
• Keyboard and touchpad both replaced by touch screens
• Physically smaller than XO-1; size and weight more like a book
• 1 watt power consumption
• Price of US$75 to large educational buyers

I get the feeling OLPC is a bunch of well-intentioned, high-level talking heads.

Re:Be Warned

[ChatHuant]

Now they make money from the ads on Slashdot and related sites, and sell SourceForge Enterprise Edition software to big companies.

I think SourceForge, Inc. (previously VA Linux Systems, nee VA Research) has actually sold the rights to the software (which software, in a funny example of "do as I say, not as I do", they had switched to a proprietary license). SourceForge, Inc. also runs the sourceforge.net code repository. Given the vocal advocacy on their web properties (like Slashdot or Linux.com), I find it ironic that sourceforge.net uses another proprietary license for their rights to the contents you put there.

Re:Be Warned

[iocat]

The problem with OLPC is that is was designed by academics, who can never let "good enough" get in the way of "visionary perfection," so you end up with a lot of worthless spces, like a paperback book sized dual-16:9 touchscreen spec that consumes no power and producers potable water as a byproduct, instead of just outsourcing the entire production to Asus to make a cheaper version of the 10-inch EEEPC.

I'm not saying academics don't produce anything worthwhile, but there's a reason they're in the thinking business, and not in the computer hardware production business.

Good example -- OLPC has the worst keyboard in history (although it did make me long for the days of my Timex/Sinclair). I can see the academics thinking "oh those dirty, ignorant, third-world children need a keyboard that can never break," ignoring the fact that a clamshell device, even in the third world, will keep the keyboard pretty clean, that you can find off the shelf keyboards cheaper, and that even poor people in the third world can understand that they need to not rub dirty into a computer keyboard, since they may be poor, but you know, poor != stupid.

Re:Be Warned

[rekrutacja]

The Sugar was problem since day one of the project. Laptop design was very innovative for that time. The idea of cheap educational laptop was brilliant. How this happened, that the hardware was finished quickly, while the software was in deep alfa? They should stick to what was proven "good enough" software solution. By scattering their small resources on building the whole new user interfaces OLPC lost its chance to master the price and marketing.

Re:Be Warned

[iocat]

I see your point, for. But as a counter argument, I used to smoke, a lot. At my computer. For hours at a time. Ashing inadvertently into the keyboard. Blowing smoke into the air intakes. It must have been a horrifyingly bad environment for my computer. Today I spill stuff on my laptop with disturbing frequency. I've never had a keyboard go bad. Look at the Apple IIc -- real, full travel keys with a waterproof backing UNDER the keys (like on a Lenovo ThinkPad). To me, a chiclet keyboard just mocks the end-user and is indicitive of patronizing UI design. As soon as I saw that, it immediately occured to me that the designers of the system really didn't respect or think about the end users very much.

As for the monitor, I don't know. That sounds like a cool feature, but probably an unnecesary one for the target audience. A 1024 x 768 fixed resolution LCD (even at a low color density to save on VRAM) is likely more than enough for doing almost all tasks that the OLPC would need to do (word processing, web surfing, etc.). And a 1024 x 768 display, while it would strike a power user as torture, is definitely not mocking to the user.

I think the OLPC is cool -- it has great design looks, and the low-power features are pretty cool (I just looked up the specs -- it can do monochrome with the backlight off). I just think that the designers got taken away with the idea of making the perfect thrid world PC, and didn't focus where I would have, which is a minimum spec + cost cutting. To get PCs to kids worldwide, I'd rather do cheap and off the shelf versus where they went. If it had been me, I'd have gone with an embedded Z80-based architecture and Contiki. Or worked with Nintendo to base the system off the ARM hardware in the DS. Or the original PlayStation. Or heck, Jerri Ellsworth's C64-on-a-chip (used to power the cool 30-in-1 C64 product a few years ago) would have gotten you to the $100 price-point with good computer power, and there are web broswers for C64.

Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

Congratulations, you crushed a competitor and, at the same time, destroyed hope for millions of needy people.

Even if you disagree that third world governments buying these laptops would have done anything, at least it might have gotten them interested in greater investment in education.. it might have gotten them thinking that more of the first world actually gives a shit.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

it might have gotten them thinking that more of the first world actually gives a shit.

We don't.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[apoc.famine]

It wasn't just them. The captain of this ship is the one with his hands on the wheel. The original plan did not include a great deal of what ended up in the final project. While outside forces were at work, blame there lies squarely on the leadership of the project.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

Was a time when I would happily defend Nicholas Negroponte.. that time has passed. His ego and incompetence had a lot to do with the failure of this project.. but that's to be expected.. he's an academic.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[serviscope_minor]

but that's to be expected.. he's an academic.

Wow, you have a massive chip on your shoulder.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[timholman]

Congratulations, you crushed a competitor and, at the same time, destroyed hope for millions of needy people.

You're giving Intel and Microsoft way too much credit. It was ASUS that destroyed the OLPC, by creating the netbook market when it released the first Eee PC. ASUS is already on its third generation of the Eee, not to mention the tooth-and-nail competition from Dell and HP, and the OLPC has barely gotten out of the starting gate. The OLPC couldn't possibly compete, even if the world economy hadn't tanked.

I firmly believe you're going to see plenty of sub-$100 Linux laptops being sold in the Third World within the next 3 years, but they're going to be coming from a half-dozen Chinese manufacturers fighting like mad to outsell each other, not the OLPC project. Microsoft and Intel won't be able to do much to stop that trend. The OLPC was a visionary idea, but like so many other visionary ideas it has been swept aside by its successors.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[multisync]

You're giving Intel and Microsoft way too much credit. It was ASUS that destroyed the OLPC, by creating the netbook market when it released the first Eee PC ... Microsoft and Intel won't be able to do much to stop that trend

The eee pcs use an Intel Atom processor, and most models can be purchased with XP for an operating system. So I doubt either Microsoft or Intel would care to stop the trend.

By the way, they're sweet little machines. I purchased one for our CFO to take with him while he travels (they fit nicely on the little trays on the back of the seats in airplanes) and we were so impressed I bought a couple more to use for training/loaner purposes. (They only come with XP home, so their usefulness is somewhat limited in an Active Directory environment).

I also picked up one for my girlfriend for Christmas, which allowed me to retire an old iBook that's been nothing but trouble. The keyboard is quite usable (you even get a left and right ctrl key!) but it takes some getting used to the position of the right shift key.

I think Asus has hit the nail square on the head with the eee pc. It's no replacement for a full-blown laptop if that's what you need, but if you have a family member who just wants a small, light, esthetically-pleasing computer to surf the web and play a little Solitaire they're perfect.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[timholman]

No. Laptops that work well in full sunlight and are rugged and low power are not being built by anyone, and won't be.

Sure they will, but only if it's economical to do so. Those are all desirable qualities in any laptop computer - why would anyone not want them? But buyers choose price over features most of the time.

The problem is this - any manufacturing process that could create an OLPC for $100 could just as easily create a bare-bones Linux laptop without the OLPC's bells and whistles for $50 or less. If you're a Third World consumer, what are you going to choose - an OLPC, or a netbook for half the price that is "good enough"? And the netbooks are going to get much better, much faster than the OLPC ever could.

This is why trickle down economics doesn't work.

This statement makes no sense. The entire OLPC concept was the result of "trickle down" economics. It would never have been possible without the manufacturing processes developed for First World computing, which have subsequently caused better and better technology to trickle down to lower price points.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[markov_chain]

You're assuming that the target market of this device are a bunch of bushmen who will use is in broad daylight with no access to electricity.

Are *any* current OLPC users (those that the OLPC got deployed to) at all close to that?

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[Rich0]

I think their holier-than-thou attitude is made particularly obvious from their whole "give-one-get-one" campaign. People who might have been willing to buy an XO for $200 were probably put off by the $400 price tag. If their goal was to increase volume to drive down cost then they should have pursued sales ANYWHERE they could get them. They could even charge a small markup in the first world and use that money towards 3rd-world effots. However, the 100% markup just priced them out of the first world market.

Their attitude seemed to be that we ought to be grateful for the opportunity to donate. My issue with that is that they chose to dicate the amount of contribution. That combined with the attitudes they seemed to come across with made me very hesitant to donate a dime to them.

Well, we see how well that worked out for them. They should have just sold them to anybody who would buy them. Then there would emerge a library of software and buzz that would have helped make the proejct more successful.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

That you for replacing my speculation of irrational fears with more speculation of greater irrational fears. You've done us all a great service.

The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[khasim]

Even though I thought it was a stupid idea, it did have one redeeming point. It would have turned a small segment of the population in those countries into producers instead of keeping them as consumers.

When they decided to support Windows, that killed the only positive point I could see in it. They would be kept as consumers.

Re:The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[msuarezalvarez]

If the OLPC project were really serious about using open source software to help the third world, it would start hiring some of the people there to work on open source projects.

That's simply absurd.

Re:The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[pembo13]

That depends on if you think the people who would receive OLPC would all be incapable of modifying the code.

Re:The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[mckinnsb]

I'm absolutely sure they can modify the code. But I'm also absolutely sure that they haven't yet. The problem is, if you're going to speculate like that, you might as well speculate that Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC so they can branch out into third world countries, making them producers in that case, too.

I'm fairly sure that this is exactly why Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC - outside of making money off of Windows licensing, of course. There is a reason why they sometimes refer to third world nations as "developing countries" (not strictly referring to software/web development) , and Microsoft wants to get in on the ground floor of that development (strictly referring to software/web development).

Also, you might be surprised at how many contributors to Open Source come from countries with fairly low standards of living. Programming, and the computer culture in general, tends to attract escapist intellectuals, if they don't become Philosophers, Mathematicians, or Artists first. Some of these escapists are running from bullies on the school yard - and some of them are hiding in a basement avoiding gunfire.

Granted, its not the majority, but I wouldn't underestimate people in third world countries if I were you. I've met some people in third world countries (where the average income is roughly 52 dollars a month to ground my statement in real metrics) that are very well versed technologically, even in proprietary technologies such as .NET and Oracle.

They should have started selling it to American

[rolfwind]

schools. Particularly grade schools and middle schools. A laptop that doesn't need maintenance. They launched that initiative 1 year back, but it was too little too late. They were actually quite hostile toward selling it in America or developed world.

Now, I don't believe computers are all that great in the classroom, but if they wanted economies of scale, it would make more sense to sell to the rich, gadget-happy country first to build up production and also legitimacy in the eyes of 3rd worlders. I imagine if MIT pushed it, some Massachusetts area schools might have adopted. Then the OLPC project could have put that on their resume as well.

No one got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM is true, and if the competitor is a relatively unknown, untested entity, doubly so. I think the move to Windows just killed it though, since it didn't differentiate OLPC laptop from any other to the casual observer.

Re:They should have started selling it to American

[SoCalChris]

Now, I don't believe computers are all that great in the classroom, but if they wanted economies of scale, it would make more sense to sell to the rich, gadget-happy country first to build up production and also legitimacy in the eyes of 3rd worlders.

That's something that I never understood. Their business plan depended on economies of scale, yet they refused to sell it to people who wanted to buy them, and had the cash.

I understand that they wanted to save the units for the needy, but the needy were never able to afford them because they never got the economy of scale working for them.

Yes, windos killed it

[Tom]

I'm certain that the submitter is correct: Allowing windos in killed the project.

Why? Because projects like this rely on the goodwill of volunteers. That comes from ideology, in a neutral sense, i.e. from people believing in something. Very few people believe in windos. It has millions of users, but few "believers". On the other hand, Linux has a very high percentage of believers among its users, it's easy to find volunteers who will contribute for free, or support the distribution channels, convince their local leaders, and so on.

There are things that money can not buy. You can build a religion on money (see Scientology), but not a crusade.

Nicholas Negroponte

[nighty5]

The OLPC is a noble idea, but I think Negroponte has underestimed the the will of its competitors to ensure OLPC doesn't take hold to give them a clear advantage.

When Intel "stole" the contract for the government of Venezuela, Negroponte was outraged, but what his missing is, its just business.

I congratulate Negroponte for his incredible effort to have a vision to give the poor the tools needed to escape dispair and to build a device, but in the end, if Intel can do it, and do it better - than it really doesn't matter.

I'd like to see the poor using free software, but in the end i'd prefer them to have food in their bellies and using commercial software than having free software and going hungry with a bankrupt OLPC.

Its a shame, because I personally love the look of the OLPC, the Classmate looks terrible purely from an aesthetic perspective.

Re:Nicholas Negroponte

[SuperKendall]

I'd like to see the poor using free software, but in the end i'd prefer them to have food in their bellies

Feeding a man for a day, vs teaching him how to fish... as they saying goes.

How hard was *that* prediction...

[zippthorne]

They only wanted to sell the fine things to people who couldn't afford them. The people who could? They could buy one, if they paid for two...

The correct way to handle it would be to charge $250 domestically and put them next to the game consoles in Wal*Mart, so lower middle-class parents can buy them for their kids. 1/5 of 10 million sales would pay for a hell of a lot more "donated" models than half of a hundred fifty thousand models.

Besides, the whole "it's good for you, but we're not letting our own kids near 'em" is pretty hard to swallow and smacks of colonialism.

Re:How hard was *that* prediction...

[Gat1024]

I don't think that'll work. You're setting up a system where more unscrupulous individuals could make a mint. If there's a big demand for a $250 laptop in richer countries, someone is bound to try to capitalize on the difference in price. What will happen is that those free or near-free machines going to third world kids will be stolen or 'lost'. They'll wind up on the grey market for $200 or thereabouts.

Re:How hard was *that* prediction...

[_Sprocket_]

What keeps them from winding up on the grey market with the current system?

Re:Netbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

I predicted this failure when they started the idea.

A lot of people predicted this failure. Including OLPC's competitors.

I have an XO

[bugs2squash]

It's pretty cool. My son loves it but it's slow and there are a few other problems, no need to relive them.

The annoying thing is that it was pretty difficult to get one. I was only able to get one if I bought another for someone else, I don;t mind, but really - if you want to drive volume...

And even then I was only able to get one for a limited special offer period.

I can't help but think that so many things would have been different if they had spent an extra $2 on a faster ARM processor and sold them more openly. More XOs in more hands would have yielded more involvement.

What about books and roofs and pencils first?

[CohibaVancouver]

My reaction is the same as the first time I heard about this "PC." Why would these impoverished nations spend $100 per machine, when what the kids need are books, pencils and a roof on their school so classes aren't cancelled - Or shoes, so they can walk to school in the first place. If we in the west want to make a difference, instead of buying a $250 PC-toy at Wal-Mart we should give our $100 to a charity that can help with some of the above issues and stop worrying about whether they ran Windows or Linux or used the wrong flavour of WiFi.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[FishWithAHammer]

BoycottNovell is an amazing organization.

That is, amazing in how insane they are. They are the epitome of the knee-jerk crowd that taints open source. They and DefectiveByDesign (hello, Genius Bar Invasion bullshit) are the two that come to mind when I think of people doing a lot to hurt the causes they say they're for.

Re:Figures.

[Locutus]

and ofcourse it helped alot to have Intel chasing behind OLPC with promises of a far far better laptop without actually doing it. FYI, the Classmate is not even a close comparison to the XO.

It also was a big help when Microsoft went around to the governments of many of the countries the OLPC had publicly listed as giving MoU's and was kind enough to find millions of dollars to invest in these governments to 'help them' with their computer technologies. You know, like how Egypt signed on with Microsoft for around $25 million and then when OLPC went back to them, all they would ask is "does it run Windows".

Naw, it was all the OLPC peoples fault 100%. Chalk up another one for big business stomping on innovation and progress. IMO.

LoB

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[hairyfeet]

The problem wasn't MSFT, or even the underpowered hardware. The problem was Negroponte and his elitist bullshit. He COULD have gotten the economies of scale on his side by selling them to the first world and using his profits to drive down production costs. Instead he tried that forced charity bullshit with the G1G1 program. I originally thought the OLPC was a great idea. His idea of having laptops for all the world's children to learn on was great. But sadly it quickly became all the third world's children and the first world could pay for it. Has he never been to the delta? Seen the kids with books from the Carter administration who live in tar paper shacks? If he would have sold them to the first world he could have helped out a lot of kids here while ramping up production.

And as much as I hate to agree with Twitter on ANYTHING, putting XP on it was a majorly stupid idea. Not only did the run off the FLOSS guys that were writing the code and fixing the bugs, they seemed to have forgotten one simple problem with XP. I have run Xp Pro, Home, WinFLP, and even XP embedded. And the one thing they have in common is they LOVE the swap. And with the OLPC having a small SSD that is a recipe for disaster. And then add on top of that the fact that the OLPC doesn't have enough room for the huge amounts of updates required to secure XP, that it doesn't have the CPU or RAM resources to run an AV or firewall, so the machines will get turned into spambots the second they hook to the net, and finally by putting XP they have destroyed the original intent of the machine.

It was SUPPOSED to be a machine for teaching kids. You know, school work, spelling, math, and to allow them to work together on educational programs through the mesh network. By putting XP what you have done is turn the OLPC into a really shitty Windows Office machine. IIRC all the XP machines get is XP and Office. What the hell good is that? Is there a pressing need to teach third world kids how to make powerpoints? I only hope that when the OLPC goes out of business, which they will, that some enterprising company buys up the plans and productions facilities. Because with the economies of scale it could be a great laptop for ALL the world's children. But as long as Negroponte is at the helm, it is going nowhere but downhill.

Re:Asus EEE ate their lunch

[grumbel]

It made a slow machine even slower and it certainly doesn't encourage practical computer skills.

The slow part is very true. If you launch a good old X11 app via Terminal they will start pretty much instantly, while even a hello-world Sugar app will take near to 10 seconds to start. However I don't buy the 'computer skill' part, Sugar really is not that different, in fact I see most of it to be pretty much the same, the Journal is analog to your average desktop search, an Activity is pretty much just an application, you have copy&paste and plenty of other stuff usual stuff. Having windows launched always in fullscreen really doesn't change much.

Where I think Sugar broke is in backward compatibility, not running Microsoft Windows, ok thats fine, since Linux is rather mature today and free, but Sugar doesn't run Linux application either, it requires special coded Sugar applications. Sugar doesn't have a way to handle normal Linux apps or even normal filesystems, its all their own little version of how the world should be without any way to interoperate with other systems or applications aside from the Terminal Activity. And thats just fatal considering that most of Sugar is just not quite finished and some of it might never be (i.e. no IDE for actually developing new Sugar application is in Sugar).

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[Belial6]

I agree about the elitest attitude, although I think that Sugar was almost as bad as XP. I tried it last year and it was terrible.

As for what the OLPC was supposed to be for... I don't think anyone ever really decided. Every time I've brought up what it was for, I have been lambasted that I had it all wrong. So, I went to their website, and all I could find was a bunch of Dilbert style buzzword bingo.

If as you say, it was intended to be an educational tool for things like spelling, math and to work together, then the mesh network was a horrible idea. In fact the entire project was over engineered from the get go. I could easily build a computer for math, spelling and simple programming for under $100 at single unit retail pricing. Even adding the criteria that it would run from a hand crank and be MORE durable than the OLPC. REAL engineers with access to bulk wholesale pricing should be able to do far better than me.

Personally, I think the OLPC was just a way to get free R&D by convincing people that the money they were donating was for charity.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[rtb61]

I disagree about the elitist attitude. Since when is intelligence and the application of knowledge considered elitists on a nerd/geek forum, lest keep the idiotic redneck point of view on myspace et al where it belongs, the elitists are the rich, greedy and pseudo celebrities. So Nicholos kicked off the OLPC which focused some real attention on bridging the global digital divide and the importance of being able to provide accessible low cost computing to make the knowledge of the world available to the children of the world.

As it is the OLPC really helped to kick off the growth of Linux on netbooks and establish it it as the future of education for children upon a global basis. As for the future of the OLPC well M$ did put the kybosh on it that by whispering sweet 'nothings' into Nicholos's ear with the intent of souring the project because of course low cost PCs in the hundred dollar range is the death of an operating system, office suite combination that basically quadruples the fully function cost of that hardware.

So the OLPC project brought focus to the problem and did it's job in demonstrating what could be done and now a range of hardware software solutions are evolving to provide the needed solution, low cost netbooks with a FOSS software stack for the education market.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[Belial6]

Apparently you are new to the conversation. Nobody says that spreading knowledge is what makes them elitist. What makes them elitists is that they were not going to soil their exclusive clientel by allowing those dirty first world kids to buy one, even if that means the 3rd world kids cannot get the benefit of economies of scale. When they did offer the OLPC in the 1st world, they were not going to let those dirty 1st worlders soil their holy work by letting them just buy one. If they are not willing to donate a machine to the 3rd world, then they are not worthy to be part of the OLPC club. Even if that means that 3rd world kids cannot get the benefit of economies of scale.

I could personally build a rugged hand powered computer for under $100 from single unit retail priced parts, but the OLPC group thought that wired networking and 8 bit processors were beneath them. If they were going to make a machine, it wasn't going to be a rugged really low cost machine. It was going to be a machine that made the 1st world envious, even if that meant that the 3rd world couldn't really afford it.

The OLPC group were elitist because they were not going to soil their hands with FOSS software that already exists, and would run just fine on the hardware they built. No, they insisted that they could write a better desktop than the ones with hundreds of thousands of man hours already put into them.

No, MS and Intel did not kill the OLPC. The OLPC is dieing because instead of building a machine that would bring computing to the 3rd world, they built a machine for well to do Americans and then didn't want to sell them to them. Heck, they would have been better off buying truck loads of Nintendo DSes and R4s than what they did.

So, no, it isn't the spread of knowledge that makes them elitists. It is the fact that they are unwilling to spread that knowledge if it doesn't stroke their ego and make them cool.

Re:"believers" are part of the problem!

[Tom]

Spare me the (often incompetent) enthusiasm of youth.

You shouldn't 'believe' in an OS or license like a God. Nobody should.

I'm probably older than you are, and my opinion is the exact opposite: You should believe in an OS or license or other things that can make a real difference to human life. There's a lot of reasons to be enthusiastic about things that have the potential to move humanity forward. On the other hand, believing in a god, any god, is just plain silly.

In the end computers are just tools.

In the end, emotions and beliefs are what make us human and different from machines.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[jjohn]

What makes them elitists is that they were not going to soil their exclusive clientel by allowing those dirty first world kids to buy one, even if that means the 3rd world kids cannot get the benefit of economies of scale

That's not elitist. That's just being stubbornly doctrinal and a bit naive. Frankly, Apple is a bit more elitist, since you've got to have a fair bit of cash to get the hardware. Linux, while not quite elitist, is certainly selective in that you must be more industrious and inquisitive than the average computer user to use it.

Yes, the OLPC project should have simply sold XO units to whom ever had the cash. That's what a for-profit company would have done. Attempting to leverage the wealth of the industrialized nations to support the 3rd world ones isn't such a bad idea. I bought an XO in the first round of G1G1. It was $400, which wasn't an onerous hardship for me at the time.

Why wasn't the G1G1 programming running ALL THE TIME? I still don't understand that at all. It's like these guys wanted to do a soft launch with their hardware.

Negroponte is considered something of a demigod at MIT, having founded the Media Lab. But I do think he executed poorly on this project because of his lack of business experience. I wonder if his brother would have done better.

Frankly, I never did cotton to the Sugar UI (let's stop this talk of it being an OS please). I'm now running Ubuntu on the XO and I'm happier for it. Running XP on the XO hardware will be a joke.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[aurispector]

Everything about Negroponte and the OLPC is elitist. The project was doomed to failure from the beginning and the only positive was the creation of the netbook market. They assumed (like do-gooders everywhere) that their good intentions would pave the way to success; now they blame evil bad everyone else when their pipe-dreams turn to shit in the face of reality.

A Thought Experiment: you are the Secretary of Education of a poor, small, rural and backward 3rd world nation with an even smaller budget. Do you:
a) buy quirky, beta-quality hardware running quirky, beta-quality software that is only being peddled to other poor, small, rural and backward third world nations.
OR
b) go with mainstream hardware and mainstream software that does the same things the rest of the world is doing?

You're just as elitist as they are for assuming you know what's best for the aforementioned countries. Pull your head out of your dirty hippie ass - the market is going to win out and a successful OLPC project would seek to harness existing manufacturers rather than bypass them. Did you really think Intel and Microsoft would stand by and watch their paradigm be destroyed? Please note that I am neither defending nor condoning their actions but merely noting their inevitability.

Oh, how easy it is to find fault

[davide marney]

I can't believe the number of posts here from people claiming how "obvious" it was that the OLPC would never work, and if Negroponte would just fix this or that aspect of the development strategy, the hardware, the software, the pricing, or the partner program, then everything would turn up roses.

There was nothing obvious about the adventures of the OLPC. They were defining an entirely new class of machine that, even now, has no true competitor (and no, none of the current netbook offerings have it right yet: they cost too much, they draw too much power, they can't be used in full daylight, and they aren't nearly rugged enough.)

When you are charting something this new, it attracts the best and brightest. These kind of people have huge egos, that's part of the package. So the fact that there have been lots of sparks flying is no surprise.

When you are trying to change the status quo this completely, it attracts intense opposition from the entrenched competition. I doubt any of us would enjoy putting up with the hammering, back-stabbing, broken promises and endless fight for oxygen that is probably a daily experience for the OLPC executives.

So, I say, cut these people some slack. Go buy a OLPC, and see what all the talk is about. I've been using an OLPC for a year now, and am daily impressed with how very different it is from any other device out there.

When you find yourself reading an ebook, and pass from the deep gloom of a subway station into the direct sunlight without even thinking about the fact that a normal PC can't do that, then you're graduated to the new OLPC world.

When you find yourself grabbing your XO without a case, walking in the rain to your car and throwing it on the back seat without a second thought, then you've graduated to the new OLPC world.

When you find yourself propping your XO up on a bowl in the kitchen so you can browse recipies on the web while you cook, and don't worry for a second about what might happen if you spill something all over it (been there, done that), then you've graduated.

This thing is really different. Give it a chance.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[Acer500]

That was another big problem, they didn't have a clear set of examples of what it was actually FOR. As it was though, it was a glorified netbook.

My country (Uruguay) was the one that invested the heaviest in OLPC (all the school-age kids are getting it), and the main problem is not the computers themselves, or Sugar OS or whatever... it is that there wasn't a plan in place to actually use them for something worthwile (textbooks, etc..).

Teachers are NOT happy about that.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[byolinux]

That's not true.

Windows users of iPods/iPhones are just one example of a non-Mac OS user going for support at a genius bar. They also provide pre-sales advice.

And Parallels is non-free software. I'm kinda glad more things don't support EFI. EFI is pretty terrible for freedom.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[aardvarkjoe]

My country (Uruguay) was the one that invested the heaviest in OLPC (all the school-age kids are getting it), and the main problem is not the computers themselves, or Sugar OS or whatever... it is that there wasn't a plan in place to actually use them for something worthwile (textbooks, etc..).

Teachers are NOT happy about that.

Gee, it's almost like all those people who said that just throwing a bunch of laptops at kids isn't going to magically help them actually knew what they were talking about.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[FishWithAHammer]

Those idiots had no intention of buying Apple products--they were doing it for the hur-hur-hur "nerd cred" that comes from doing something so titanically stupid. The grunts on the ground aren't going to change Apple policy and the people who do wouldn't have even heard of the stupid little stunt. It was an idea conceived of by the basement dwellers and reaffirmed by the echo chamber of fellow gnulots that don't understand how the world actually works (and how that differs from how somebody might want it to work).