OLPC Unveils Plans For Tablets By 2012

adeelarshad82 writes "The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative outlined its product roadmap for the next three years, a plan that includes the release of tablet-based OLPC by 2012. During the next three years, OLPC plans on releasing two laptops, the first two years' priced around $200 and $150 respectively, before launching a tablet in 2011 for less than $100."

Comments

The holy grail... NOT

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

For some reason everyone seems to think a tablet is the holy grail of computing. I can tell you, for most uses they don't add any value. I have owned two of them, and found both to be uncomfortable, and difficult to use. On the other hand, my HackBook Mini (AKA HP Mini 1000 with Snow leopard) gets used daily, and is an absolute pleasure to use.

Tablets seem like a solution in search of a problem to me.

Re:I hate to say it,

[hairyfeet]

The problem with the OLPC is the Negroponte is an ivy league moron IMHO. He could have sold it to the first world, gotten the economies of scale on his side, and used the profits to subsidize the third world sales, possibly even bringing the price down to $100 each like originally planned. But what does he do?

He tries to "force" charity with the G1G1 program, instead of selling to the first world in a normal manner (like we don't have poor kids? WTF?) and let the EEE and other Netbooks steal any momentum he could have had, he burns and pisses off the FLOSS community, which he frankly needed more than air to get decent performance out of such a tiny machine, by going with MSFT and putting XP on the things, which BTW as someone who has used every version of every MSFT OS, including WinFlip and XP Embedded, putting MSFT anything on a flash based device is suicide because MSFT never made an OS that don't hit swap like there is no tomorrow, and has just generally burned his bridges and missed every opportunity to make the OLPC into a true "laptop for every child".

So I hope when they go under, which with Negroponte at the helm they will, someone buys the OLPC designs and sells the OLPC to the world. Because there was some really great ideas like the mesh network, the daylight readable screen, and the crank for providing power when in BFN. But sadly it looks like Negroponte has done missed the boat and it will end up being ARM Netbooks that end up breaking the $100 barrier and thus becoming the "laptop for any kid". Sad to see such potential wasted, but Negroponte has pretty much proven, at least to me, that he just don't have what it takes to lead the OLPC to greatness.