OLPC's XO-3 Prototype Tablet Coming In 2010

itwbennett writes "During an interview Tuesday at the MIT Media Lab, OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the group will have a working prototype of the XO-3 tablet by December of this year. 'At CES [2011] we will show a tablet that can be and will be used for children probably in the developed world,' Negroponte said. 'You'll see from us, God willing, an ARM tablet,' he said. 'The screen area will probably be a 9-inch diagonal, maybe more.' The most important feature will be a dual-mode display that will allow it to be used indoors and outdoors. Price: $75."

Comments

Re:Sell outs

[spire3661]

They changed the machines to include windows and partnered with Intel. Once they started discussions with MS, i lost all respect for the project as that was what the whole idea was supposed to be against. The way OLPC was billed in the beginning was a rugged linux computer with all open sourced software to avoid software vendor lock in. AT least thats what i took away from the initial OLPC discussions.

Re:What's the problem with keyboards?

[WillDraven]

I can't say for sure that this is their thinking, but using an on screen keyboard allows for all of your localization to be done in software instead of having to make different keys for areas that use different character sets.

Re:Thanks OLPC!

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

And you truly think netbooks developed from there?

Subnetbooks have been around for ages. What started the netbook revolution was the new availability of very cheap and small LCD displays, and the appearance of cheap and power-efficient x86 processors that could work well enough while being cheap and not requiring huge heat-sinks (like the Atom, some VIA chips, etc).

Do you think Apple, Dell, HP, or the damn OLPC project actually develop anything? They develop casings, at best. They just stay on top of whatever new crap is coming cheaply out of China. That's it. You can find cheap and small mobos with embedded ARM processors in China for under 30 dollars. Boards very similar in specs to the one Apple is using on the iPad can be found for ~70 dollars in China, including 900mhz ARM processors. Embedded Wifi and 3G for +20 dollars.

Things don't get to the market when they are invented, they come out when the Chinese have managed to produce the technology required to assemble them cheaply.

Re:Sell outs

[Locutus]

but like so many muggles out there, Negroponte believed the crap Microsoft was telling him. He, and others, also believed that Intel would be interested in helping with the project when in fact, technologically they had nothing to help him with. Intel processors are not the most energy efficient and even after years of "new" mobile processor work, they still are no where near what the RISC designs for power and performance.

Negroponte was sucked into thinking his technical people were Linux and open source fanatics by the very people who were out to stop the project because it gutted their profit margins for existing products.

So it sounds like he's now seen the light but at what cost? Years have been lost and many who were behind the project left it because of the ignorance of yet another 'business' type guy believing the crap Microsoft tells them. He couldn't even figure it out that there was only one or two Microsoft guys working on Windows on the XO and not much of anything like a team and just the memory footprint Windows required should have been enough to know it was a joke.

But who knows, maybe a <$100 tablet with all the Sugar and spice of the original XO but running on a cool ARM Cortex a8 or even a9 processor might get things moving again. I'm not sure about Android though since Sugar has lots going for it as a platform for educational software.

LoB

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What's the problem with keyboards?

[SydShamino]

Obviously they should keep the keyboard and eliminate the screen then, right?