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OLPC 2.0 — One Laptop Foundation Reboots
Greg Huang writes "In early January, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation laid off half its staff and shed work on the Sugar graphical interface. Now, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and president Chuck Kane for the first time detail the foundation's new plans, describe how the XO laptop will do what netbooks can't do, and share their hope to keep working with Sugar developer Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year."
They also sabotaged their own efforts by NOT offering these units to the general public. Their limited "Buy One Give One" program was too little, too late.
If they had allowed the sale of the units to the general public, or even domestic markets (which I think they eventually did let one school district in the USA buy them) they would not have had such difficulty securing the minimum orders to secure their price point. They would also have had a revenue stream to sustain themselves and subsidize units for distribution in poorer areas. And they could STILL have remained a non-profit business while doing so.
Instead, Negroponte decided that it wasn't enough to give learning computers to underprivileged children in third-world coutnries - he also had to ensure that anyone who could actually afford them would be denied.
But the window of opportunity is now closed: The Asus Eee PC and similar products are satisfying the market the XO only teased. Sure the XO has a few features that other netbooks don't, but the novelty that could have taken them "over the hump" has worn off and now they're screwed.
=Smidge=
I have an OLPC XO-1 and have logged a fairy decent amount of time on eee PCs(contract job, an outfit was looking to make citrix thin clients out of them).
My comparision: eeePC is notably more powerful, no question. It also feels more like a "real" computer, probably because of the hard top, rather than rubber, keyboard(also the color, obviously). The screen, though, is something else entirely. With the backlight off, or in bright sunlight, you get a 1200x900, very sharp, very readable, 200dpi, reflective LCD screen. With backlight on, or in lower light, you get color at somewhat lower, though still adequate, effective resolution. The screen is the big deal. In color mode, it is as good or better than a standard netbook screen. In greyscale, it is by far the best electronic reading device I've ever used(e-ink might be better; I've not seen it). The mesh stuff is cute; but not something I've had a chance to play with much. Sugar is interesting; but other linuxes work as well.
I can certainly see why netbooks would be largely preferable in many situations; but they cannot touch the OLPC screen, for my purposes, nor do they have any of the cute collaborative stuff(whose utility I cannot comment on).