Slashdot Mirror
OLPC Halves Power Consumption For XO 1.75
angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has reduced the price of the next version of its notebook to US$165 and power consumption has been slashed by half compared to the previous version. The XO-1.75, with its 8.9-inch touchscreen, will start shipping in the second quarter of this year."
surprised this wasn't in the summary but "The XO-1.75 is the first OLPC laptop to use chips based on processor technology from Arm Holdings, which has been a huge factor in reducing power on the laptop, " Good stuff, and it seems as if the mythical $100 price is within shooting distance
They should have started with ARM to begin with. Had they done that then they wouldn't have had the issues with Intel back stabbing them nor Microsoft wasting their time. Better late than never I guess.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
On the one hand, this article makes a clear case that there will be children in Chad mindlessly turning a crank for one hour and 47 minutes in order to do their homework for the night.
Yet on the other hand, these kids have orders of magnitude more computing horsepower than I did as a Reagan-era high school kid in an upper middle class community. Hard to know who should envy who.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Great! Can't wait to buy one.
Note that I said one.
Advice: on VPS providers
The actual cost of non-premium hardware is very, very little. For instance the screen in most netbooks only costs about $10-$15, probably less in bulk. The only reason Ipads cost so much is they use under-clocked top of the line CPU's, IPS displays with lots of SSD space and a capacitive touchscreen in an expensive aluminum case. Now if you stick to a cheaper non-IPS display and use a resistive touchscreen and reduce the storage capacity and put it into a cheap plastic case... and you end up with a cheap Android tablet.
Which reminds me Walgreens had a cheap android tablet around x-mas for only $99, there really is very little, if any, difference between a netbook and a tablet besides a physical keyboard. In fact if you read the article they discus how it really is a tablet with the cpu and everything behind the screen, but with a permanent keyboard and battery attached at the bottom. If Walgreens can sell a tablet for $99, they can certainly attach a keyboard and put some sort of manual charging device on it for $65 more.
But didn't we learn from the promise and price fiasco with the 1.0 and beta of this hardware?
Side-effect learning: they were the first to step into what is now called netbook and probably the very existence of the netbooks and ebook readers has roots in their first attempt (even if they failed on price, they showed there is a market for low-end laptops). Keeping into acount they are not a for-profit, it's still remarkable they managed to pull such a trick.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Of course it's a fantasy. The ideas of "equal society" and cultures with ANY distinguishing characteristics are mutually exclusive.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The main problem with the OLPC, the one thing that made the project open to subversion by companies like Intel and Microsoft, is its centralized model of development. You get the laptops or tablets from one source, say, the central government of the country that buys into the idea or some buy-one/donate-the-other scheme. I understand that it's supposed to be more of an educational than a computing project. But this set-up generates dependency. What happens when the machines are damaged? More importantly, what happens to the next batch of children without laptops? Since the machines are manufactured in the usual Asian places (hint: two countries claiming the same name), this will likely result in a foreign exchange outflow from a country that can least afford it, as certain essential non-technological items (e.g. food and basic medicine) may need to take priority.
What the OLPC should have set out to develop is a RepRap-like infrastructure that will allow the adults (or even older children) of the community that takes part in the project to manufacture the laptops by themselves from cheap, readily available components. If this isn't 100% possible, then give them at least enough transfer of technology to allow them to build the least technological parts, like the case or the keyboard. Think of a laptop case made out of recycled plastic or hard laminated cardboard. Then again, how far off is the day when we can run a desktop OS on an Arduino board?
Don't just give them fish. Teach them how to fish.
Computers made using such technology might appear crude at first, but not much cruder than the devices that ushered in the PC revolution.
The only reason Ipads cost so much is they use under-clocked top of the line CPU's, IPS displays with lots of SSD space and a capacitive touchscreen in an expensive aluminum case.
and don't forget the 200% apple tax.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I never thought I'd be a beneficiary from the OLPC project. I'd never be able to use an OLPC for anything I do. But I love how the project has put a bent in the technical landscape of portable devices industry. It was a failure as an education project perhaps, but it succeeded in more than one way as a laptop research project.
When OLPC came out in 2007, the laptops were on a lap-melting, back-breaking rush towards bigger & faster. Nearly everything came in with a Core2 or a Core2 Duo, with lots of RAM (yeah, guess what you can't save power on, RAM needs a strobe whether it has data or not). The fact that OLPC came out in 2007, sort of forced the geeks to look at weight as a valid concern for a consumer device. Not to mention questions about why a 1995 top-end laptop ran for 4 hours on batteries, when a 2005 one won't do the same at the same weight.
Less than a year after OLPC came the rush of netbooks. Finally machines that people can afford to buy (like here in India) and carry around without being tied to a wall plug. Scroll paste a few years, it is not only consumers, using them. I see Rasmus post PHP benchmarks off his netbook, I see entire teams (like Inkscape) suddenly sit up and re-work their UI workflows/dialog-space for it. I see the Notion Ink use OLPC Pixel Qi tech in the new tablet.
Socially speaking, the project has been a great failure. But technologically, it has left a huge impact on portable devices everywhere. As for the former, the project probably forgot that "Charity begins at Home". Refusing to sell full-price to americans wanting them shows a complete lack of understanding of how economies of scale & price segmentation would've worked out. I'm not going to mourn the failure of Negroponte, but I'll just give the technical folks at OLPC a big thumbs-up.
I'll happily pay 200$ for an arm netbook'ish if they'll sell me one in India. Hell, I'll even fix all the things that don't work for me - for FREE. Not all of us are poor & in need of a hand-out. Heck, I'm at the verge of putting in a pre-order for a Notion Ink Adam, for double the price, if the hype pans out.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Flash is a curse on the web...
But it does work on some ARM stuff. Just because Apple doesn't have it doesn't mean others don't. I have it on my N900, for instance.
Socially speaking, the project has been a great failure. But technologically, it has left a huge impact on portable devices everywhere. As for the former, the project probably forgot that "Charity begins at Home". Refusing to sell full-price to americans wanting them shows a complete lack of understanding of how economies of scale & price segmentation would've worked out. I'm not going to mourn the failure of Negroponte, but I'll just give the technical folks at OLPC a big thumbs-up.
I think it is unfair to declare this project a great failure, even in the social area. The project hasn't ended yet, and considering the highly ambitious goal they have set themselves, it is no wonder it takes them time to reach it. But I agree that the technology spin-offs of the project are remarkable too, although I think you should give Negroponte some credit for that part too.
I'm not so sure mass-selling the original OLPC on other markets would have been a good idea. The support organization to do that properly would have been costly, and a distraction from the real goals of the project. Perhaps they could have created or partnered with a commercial enterprise that would license the design to sell to consumers, but getting the legalities of such a deal right would have been tricky. And the first OLPC design was really just a beta anyway, if that.
Most $600 cellphones [...]
Most $600 laptops have more functionality and more power than this thing. That matters exactly fuck-all to people who cannot even afford a $165 laptop on their own. Besides, how would you like doing your homework or reading long texts and watching films on a cell phone? Did you even look up what the OLPC project is about? The kids in the third world do not need an app store, they need a platform that enables them to get used to a machine that magically emits light, shows pretty pictures that can move and make noise, and that allows them to talk to someone outside their range of sight. Ideally one that survives in the desert and uses little power. Which is precisely what the XO was designed from the ground up to be.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I've tracked the OLPC project and have worked in educational technology for years, and arguments over processors and power consumption are bullshit. The same goes for the philosophies of education behind educational technology. At the moment, the biggest issue is teacher training. Simply put, most teachers don't know how to use computers in the context of classroom teaching. That's even true when it comes down to the basics. Sticking an ARM processor into the case isn't going to solve that. Getting the computer to run on 2 Watts isn't going to solve that. Praying that the child is smarter than the teacher when it comes down to adopting new technologies for learning isn't going to solve that. Indeed, this emphasis upon technology over learning and these idle hopes that children are better at using technology for learning have left educational technology in the same cesspool that it was in 30 years ago: teachers, the people who are responsible for guiding children through the process of learning, are almost as ignorant about how to use it today as they were way back then.
(For what it's worth, I think that there is some value in the 'student is smarter than the teacher' mentality when it comes down to educational technology. Yet that only works for a subset of children, since it involves a lot of self-motivation.)
So where are the other 10" touchscreen slates with similar performance and capabilities at half the cost?
I expect to see the market flooded with such devices in the coming months.
And 200% isn't wrong. Well it is, but there's a grain of truth behind it. I speced out a 15" macbook pro with a regular pc laptop, matching the components as close to identically as I could. The macbook was almost exactly double the price. While I accept that the build quality is much better with the macbook, a 100% markup is kind of a lot.
When I bought my current macbook in 2008, the price differences weren't that much higher... maybe 20-30%. But the current markup is so significant that unless their next refresh is significant (rather than the spec bump they've had the past couple years) I will likely be considering other options.
The n900 runs full flash 9.0.277.0, not flash lite.
At least the ones used in Uruguay come with Linux, almost all school children here have a linux laptop, and you see poor children on the street or buses using them.
ARE YOU DAFT?
Of course there are other benefits to Apple. Some are very, very hard to compare objectively. That doesn't necessarily justify the extra expense.
Let's try another comparison, this time with full specs. I beefed up the specs on the Dell laptop to meet your concerns. To wit:
Apple:
2.53 GHz Core i5
4 GB RAM
500 GB HDD
15" 1440x900 display
8x DVD Writer
NVIDIA GT 330M
OS X
Backlit Keyboard
$2049
Dell:
1.73 GHz Core i7
8 GB RAM
640 GB HDD
15.6" 1080p display
Blu-ray reader + DVD Writer
NVIDIA GT 420M
Windows Ultimate
Backlit Keyboard
92 Wh battery
2 MP Webcam
1 year in-home service
$1825
Now, I believe that should satisfy most everything you mentioned. This is by no means a low-end system, and exceeds the Macbook Pro in almost every possible way (at least, on paper). And STILL saves you over $200.
Does the Apple still have a few advantages? Of course. The dual video thing, the power adapter, and it's probably lighter (but that's hard to judge on customized systems).
Maybe a better measure of the "Apple Tax" is how much they charge for upgraded components:
Extra 4 GB RAM? Apple charges an extra $220 vs. Dell.
256 GB SSD? Apple charges an extra $100 vs. Dell.
3 year protection? Apple charges an extra $139 vs. Dell.
That is the Apple tax in action.
A *desktop* from that era, late 98se/early windows XP is fetching a hundred dollars, with 256 megs ram,like pc100 or 133, let alone anything newer, and any similar era laptop is $200 and up.
Where can I sell Late Windows 98SE/Early XP desktops for $100? I can't GIVE them away (other than to the recyclers) because no one wants them.