OLPC XO-3 To Debut At CES, Starting Under $100 (But Not For You)

Computerworld is one of many publications heralding the expected arrival next week of the long-awaited OLPC tablet, and making much of one very cool feature: the price. The initial XO laptops from OLPC never quite made it to the hoped-for under-$100 level. But at least with an ordinary LCD screen, says project founder Nicholas Negroponte, the new XO-3 actually has. (An optional daylight-readable Pixel Qi screen bumps the price up, but it's not clear quite how much.) Both OLPC and Pixel Qi will be at next week's CES; hopefully I'll get a chance to provide some first-hand details, and ask whether there will be another round of the Buy One Give One program, so users outside the reach of big government buying programs can both further the project and play with the product; so far, the word is that these will only be available for large government buyers. (TechCruch has better pictures of the new device.)

Comments

What does it mean to have a price?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't buy it, it's kinda nonsensical to say it has a $100 price. It doesn't have a price at all.

Re:What does it mean to have a price?

[osu-neko]

If you can't buy it, it's kinda nonsensical to say it has a $100 price. It doesn't have a price at all.

Um, no. There are a lot of things I can't buy, but nevertheless have a price. If anyone at all can buy it, it has a price -- there's no logical implication in the definition of "price" that guarantees that you personally can purchase something. Indeed, it's often the price itself that excludes that possibility, although there are countless other reasons why you may not be able to buy something that nevertheless does have a price and can be purchased by other, qualified individuals or organizations.

Idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

OLPC really screws the pooch each time by not offering their tech for geeks in the first world. It would greatly increase the volume of production and drive software development, as well as generate a huge volume of fixes and improvements in the appropriate wikis.

Re:Idiotic

[Nimey]

Also they'd have to spend money hiring support personnel, because it wouldn't be just tech geeks who'd buy the things. A couple hundred dollars or less is in the Walmart demo's price range.

Re:Idiotic

[manekineko2]

I think you meant "as well as generate a huge workload on the few volunteers dedicated to the project". If you want to help OLPC, be dedicated, and join a local developer group. Then you will also get your hands on a device.

If they started distributing devices to everyone, they'd loose their focus, and the viewpoint of the project would become skewed. Don't forget, the OLPC project is about education, not technology!

From Charles Kane, OLPC president's own mouth: "the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible."

Somehow, they seem to run the one consumer electronics project that doesn't benefit from additional customers. It is probably not a coincidence that this is the one consumer electronics project run by a non-profit.

I used to be a huge OLPC project fan, now I think they're a bit of a joke. The democratization of computers is not going to come from a top-down project like OLPC. They had their chance, and due to the lack of market pressures because of their educational non-profit status, that ship sailed a long time ago.

The democratization of computers is going to come from real companies that are creating real products that are shipping into real peoples' hands right now. The cost of a Chinese-made Android tablet is frequently significantly lower than $100. And they don't have to deal with the baggage of living in some sort of bizarro world where more sales is a liability.

The only benefit that OLPC provided over commercial projects to sell low-cost computers was the open-source nature of Sugar OS specifically designed to teach children about how computers worked and how they could be programmed, thus teaching fishing instead of giving fish. Then they jettisoned that, and clarified their mission is just to be fishmongers that sell special fish for kids, and it escapes me how they could do a better job with this than their for-profit competition.

Re:Idiotic

[rtfa-troll]

Then sell it with no support whatsoever.

For very good reasons, most consumer protection laws don't allow this. If the customer says the system was broken when deliered you have to replace it. At that point, you need to provide enough support to find the power switch otherwise your costs will rocket. At that point, you are providing support no matter what.

This is the device I'd be most likely to buy

[msobkow]

While I await my Alan Kay designed fantasy notepad-sized stylus tablet, I really believe in OLPC's fundamental mission.

If I develop for any vendor specific device, it'll be this one. Not the market-hyped iPad.

I hope they have the buy-two-get-one program again. Hopefully I can scratch up the coin to see someone who can't afford a device piggyback off my purchase.

Re:This is the device I'd be most likely to buy

[Locutus]

I'm not sure you know much about the OLPC project and their software since you mentioned nothing about Sugar and only mentioned the Android ROM vendor. OLPC is about education and their software platform consists of an OS layer which has low power and mesh networking as it's key requirements. Then there is the application layer which is the Sugar interface and application system.

Besides, those netbook vendors who came out with devices after the OLPC XO while the press claimed they were comparable they were not. No mesh networking, not power efficient, not sunlight readable, and not ruggedized. Did you know that Intel had to ship and install a diesel generator outside of a classroom they setup as validation of their ClassMate PC because the laptops could not run for a full day of use with intermittent power?

And those other cheap devices you're reading about are also not in the ball park of any OLPC device. Cheap yes but not the same.

LoB

Re:This is why prototypes are fiction

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Well, yeah.

But the fact is, they came pretty damn close. it looks badass.

Mass production

[currently_awake]

In manufacturing it's all about volume. If you make 10 times as many the price per unit drops by half or so. Make it and sell it everywhere. Let first world developers help out the third world ones. I'm willing to pay a little extra for charity, but not twice as much (give one, get one). And don't bump up the specs for windows. History is filled with cheap computers that changed the world.

Re:Mass production

[grcumb]

In manufacturing it's all about volume. If you make 10 times as many the price per unit drops by half or so. Make it and sell it everywhere.

You're ignoring the costs of marketing[*], supply chain management, vendor relations, legal compliance. technical certifications, tax and tariff issues, etc. etc.

If you're an existing computer seller (e.g. Dell, Lenovo), you've already got a significant investment in these areas, but if you're a small organisation whose target is the developing world, bootstrapping a global distribution network might seem like a distraction.

Of course, there are a number of ways to work around this, like forming a strategic partnership with a large distributor. But if history is any example, the large vendors are anything but enamoured with OLPC. Nonetheless, there are ways to achieve what you describe. I just don't think they're as trivial as you make them out to be.

-------------
[*] I don't mean cheesy advertising shills, I mean marketing in the sense of determining how the whole supply chain is going to be managed, figuring out who to talk to, what volumes to anticipate, etc.

Re:Mass production

[Lumpy]

Then wait for them to hit ebay. You will survive havingto wat ot buy one 3 moths later.

The laptops started hitting ebay at $99.00 less than 5 months after they did the buy one get on program. A lot of people bought it and really had no clue as to what they bought, were unhappy with them, and then sold them.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OLPC-XO-1-Laptop-Computer-Runs-great-/150730806444?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item23184194ac

There's one for $75.00 I would buy one for my bug out bag if they would take AA batteries.

Re:Mass production

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Well, now we've got both problems of non-commercial production, although really they're both the same problem :

In commercial for-profit ("capitalist" although that's not a perfect match) products the customer is in charge. "In the limit", the product that's made is the one customers want, subject to the limitations the environment provides (ie. laws, like copyright, and technical and economical) limitations. The products made, due to competition are the best that are technically and economically possible, and they are available to all.

Products made by charity, dictatorships, communists ... are also all similar : they are what the producer likes to produce, not what the customer wants (historical extremes include: twigs instead of paper/gold money (not kidding), soviet nails (google it), pine needle tea). They are politically motivated and are thus only available to whomever is deemed "worthy" (and it just never happens to be you), or people who use other kinds of motivation to get them (in other words, they'll kill you if you don't produce them. Variations on killing are possible, like burn your house down, or send you to siberia, or kill/kidnap your children like the muslims did, ...). Fortunately, these products also suck. The intent, after all, is not the product. Not even indirectly. The intent is making American politicians, who don't use the product and never will, think as good as possible about the product, while making the product itself as worthless as possible. The purpose is PR, as pure as possible, not good products.

The intent of these products is political gain for their producer. The products are not the best possible ones, they're actually the worst possible ones. They must necessarily be as cheap as possible, entirely without considerations like usability. Especially if the people they're given to are not the people were political gain is coming from (e.g. this case : Negroponte gives them to hamas, obviously expects political gain from the democrat party and expects that gain to translate into sponsoring to his "research". It probably will do so. It will also probably damage the chances of Gazan kids, because the product is inferior. That's how it's designed)

Both of these are extremes. In a capitalist society companies might decide to lobby the government thereby changing the environment for both themselves and the competition. Additionally taxes dictate that products that aren't at least x% better than their raw materials don't get made (in practice today, that's somewhere around 2500% in America, more in Europe). In dictatorships/communist countries/... the products produced must still be good enough to prevent a mass-lynching of the dictatorship/party/mullahs/... So both extremes are tempered somewhat towards a middle ground that is the hated imperfection that plagues the human race.

You must understand the incentives here : what is good for Negroponte and what's bad for Negroponte :
1) good : convincing American politicians his product is good (this gains him money/people/resources, these people decide his pay/whether to fire him/...)
2) bad : actually providing a valuable product to the people he claims to help (since this costs him money/people/resources)
It is a good thing that he does sell it to Americans, but it would be very bad indeed if he sold it to many Americans, who will then invariably point out how inferior it is, which damages him. Regardless of that, the fact that he sells it in America has a tiny chance of keeping him honest, but ... I doubt it. Giving demonstrations, probably with many, many "this feature is coming" statements ... that's extremely good business.

That's the choice that's there. Either things like copyright (or some better compromise)/markets/trademarks/... exists and producers stand to gain financially from their customer (and producers is people investing in product/content production, which overlaps but is not identical to "authors"). In this

Not the real world

[jamesl]

In the real world, a product isn't a product until it has a part number and a price. The part number is tied to a specific configuration with a committed level of performance. The price signifies that the vendor is putting his money where his mouth is. OLPC is so far (once again) all talk.

Re:This is why prototypes are fiction

[Locutus]

that would have been more of a concept model than prototype IMO. Prototypes are usually somewhat functional models and not just a fake mock up. They completely missed the thin/thickness aspect of the concept version. The solar panel option seems silly to me considering people would want to use the device during the daylight hours and having it attached to a cable and that solar panel covered lid doesn't seem to fit the use case for a tablet device. Maybe if there was a 2nd battery or something it could charge while detached from the tablet then it might work.

And too bad they couldn't get the $100 price with the PixelQ display. The outdoor readable display would be a must IMO. I hope they do the buy2get1 deal on this.

LoB

Techno navel-gazing

[Anonymous Coward]

The OLPC projects strikes me as fundamentally useless. On the list of things keeping children in poor countries from getting an education, lack of laptops is way towards the bottom. Now assuming there is a benefits for kids already in school to get access to a computer, a laptop strilkes me as a terribly inefficient way to go. You'd get far more bang for your buck with desktops. And most of all, every time I read about OLPC, it's always about the tech and the specs, not how it actually helps kids. That strikes me as techno navel-gazing at its worst. Until I actually read or see a story that details the benefits to real children (and please, feel free to send those links), I'll keep assuming that this is first and foremost about people finding ways to make themselves feel good about what they do.

They're too late and way overpriced for the market

[tomhudson]

$52, but throw in a $20 government subsidy and people are getting them for $35. each. How a Montreal company won the race to build the world's cheapest tablet - it runs linux and android - the cost - $52 each. Here's just a small part of the story.

Published Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011 6:40PM EST

In the morning, Suneet and the remaining three bidders return to the same room. At the front, a 12-person committee shows off the submitted tenders, time-stamped and sealed with wax, before reading off each companyâ(TM)s bidâ"including the lowest estimate of what it would cost to make the Indian governmentâ(TM)s dream: the cheapest tablet in the world.

When the presentation is finished, Datawindâ(TM)s price tagâ"$52â"is the lowest. The next cheapest bid is for $64. âoeI went white,â Suneet says now. âoeI thought, âWeâ(TM)ve missed something.â(TM)â

Feeling nauseous, he staggers out into the antechamber, where rival bidders lob wisecracks in his direction. âoeAt that price, weâ(TM)ll buy some,â one businessman says, laughing. Frantic, Suneet calls Montreal, where it is nearly 3 a.m., knowing heâ(TM)ll wake up Raja. But his elder brother, who at times forgets how many patents he has to his name (more than 50) but never forgets product specs, reassures him that the final price accounts for every single component in the device. Thatâ(TM)s when it sinks in: Theyâ(TM)ve nailed this.

So far, Datawind has manufactured about 10,000 of its ultracheap devices, and has subcontracted more factories in India to gradually churn out a volume of tablets that still seems unbelievable to the founders. The Indian state plans to subsidize the tablets down to between $20 and $35 (U.S.), to be sold to college and university students, and wants to roll the devices out to around 12 million users over the next 12 months. After that, the goal is to place one of these tablets in the hands of each of the countryâ(TM)s 80 to 100 million high school students. The process, despite the hype, is still in a nascent stage, unfolding slowly.

But things got stranger. Shortly after the announcement, Suneet was invited to meet with Thailandâ(TM)s Minister for Information Communications Technology (who was so interested in purchasing 10 million tablets that he attended their meeting even as flood waters descended on Bangkok). Calls arrived from Turkey (which wants 15 million tablets), Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama and Egypt. At one point, the Swedish embassy in Canada called: Would Suneet possibly have time to meet the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt? And would it be possible to send out a press release to announce that the meeting was happening?

Another story: from pcworld

And for an extra $10, you get a much better cpu, a better touch screen, more battery life, etc.

So, forget Canonicals' secret plans to unveil a cheap tablet running linux next week - these run both linux and android, and they're already being sold.

The first OLPC overpromised and underdelivered

[dpbsmith]

I was one of the original G1G1 participants, and I'm sorry to say that the gap between what was promised and what was delivered would never have been forgiven in any commercial enterprise. The "20 hour" battery life turned out to be 3-4 hours, and despite much talk about improvements to the power management software, nothing ever came of it.

The biggest disappointment for me was that the much-heralded "show source" button, didn't. I never quite worked out the tortuous explanations/excuses, but one of the original premises was that all of the machine's source would be available for inspection and modification--to kids, if sufficiently bright. In reality, all the enthusiastic video demonstrations of the "show source" feature were just showing ordinary browser HTML source, and as nearly as I could tell, the "show source" button never did anything more than that.

"Sugar," which I'd hoped would educate me in a brand new model for computer interaction, was, at the time, a bad joke with poor usability. The only way to locate journal entries was by remember to enter text tags for each one when complete, and doing text searches on the tags. It was explained that "fortunately kids like to describe everything they're doing." All usability objections were answered with the retort that I was not part of the machine's intended user base--true enough, and I have never verified for myself whether eight-year-old kids using the OLPC laptop really do type in text tags to enable them to locate their documents.

The one practical use I meant to put it to, as an eBook reader for PDF documents, didn't work because the PDF reader program was buggy, crashprone, and--even when it didn't crash--didn't save your place in the document (and didn't have any bookmarking mechanism). If you stopped reading at page 56, when you reopened the document, you'd be at page 1 and would have to remember what page you were on and scroll to it.

Hopefully all of these problems have long since been dealt with, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Re:The first OLPC overpromised and underdelivered

[spage]

In the latest stable release on my G1G1 XO-1, pressing View Source (Fn + Space) opens up a nifty project source code browser for Chat, Paint, Read and other Python activities I tried (it's pretty cool!).

The Sugar Journal is just different. If you don't name you get Paint Activity, Chat Activity, etc. which is no worse than having New document.odp, New document(2).odp, etc. It's BETTER for kids because there's no folders to navigate. The Sugar developers have smoothed a lot of the rough edges and improved things, e.g. the default when you start an activity is to resume your last document.

PDF support was terrible, but you can blame Evince and Poppler for not managing memory better on a device with only 128kB RAM. These days the Read activity remembers the last page you're on and has bookmarking with notes! You can flip the screen and close the keyboard and still use the arrow and game keys work to move/zoom/page around, so maybe it works better as an e-reader. (Also you can now open PDFs within the browser, but that doesn't work as well.)

As people work on the software it slowly improves, and new releases incorporate improvements in Fedora, GTK, Abiword, etc. The constructionist (or is it constructivist, I get my pedagogical terms confused) activities like Scratch and Turtle Blocks are impressive. But I don't think many adults would enjoy using an XO over a conventional laptop or desktop. I had run Sugar under qemu so I knew I wouldn't be blown away by my G1G1 laptop, regardless of Nicholas Negroponte's sales hype. I think OLPC has it exactly right these days, provide laptops to anyone with a credible project that advances their educational aims.

$35 Tablet

[evilviper]

The original OLPC made lots of sense, even if they botched the execution... I'll point to the massive success of the EEEPC as proof that they were only slightly off the mark. Personally, I thought going with a dirt cheap B&W LCD screen to start would have solved most of their problems, but I digress.

But this tablet makes no sense. The Aakash / UbiSlate tablets cost half as much (for real, in production) and is designed to serve exactly the same purpose as OLPC. In addition, Android smartphones (with qwerty keyboard, making them vastly more useful) retail for $100 here on the shelves in the US (no contract, not subsidized, not on sale). We're talking about full-featured mobile devices, much like what I use for 90% of my computing purposes, and am typing on right now...

OLPC's main reason to exist last time around was extreme power savings, due to the great expense of electricity in the third world. But now, normal mass market mobile devices now rival OLPC's energy targets, as well as having more than sufficient durability designed-in.

  http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phones/samsung-intercept-phone.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_tablet

I don't see any reason for OLPC to make custom hardware anymore, rather than just becoming a software company, possibly + logistical support.

Re:They're too late and way overpriced for the mar

[tomhudson]

Not the same thing at all. First, the one I cited has already been shipped, unlike either the one you linked to, or the OLPC XO-3. So, not vaporware - unlike most OLPC announcements that don't measure up to the initial hype.

Second, if you read the OLPC article, they don't actually plan on building a tablet if competitors can do it for less ... so that's pretty much the end of that ... the OLPC project is pretty much dead at this point.

Think of it - the iPad didn't even exist 2 years ago. Today, you can buy a linux+android tablet for under $60. Why would any government get involved in a $100+ tablet when they can get them for half, AND manufacture them under license locally, creating jobs in their own countries?

Simple answer - they won't.

Re:Good for them

[Osgeld]

how do you know I am not sitting in a cave with a battery, telegraph key, and a tape deck?

If you really want to get your hands on one

[object404]

Hey everyone.

Although units are very hard to get a hold of, if you're really sincere and interested about developing, OLPC will ship and lend you units free of charge with the promise that you will pass them on to the next developer when you're done with your project.

msobkow, all you need to do is to make a good project proposal and apply for the contributors program:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program

They really do send these out. I applied and OLPC sent over some units all the way to the Philippines

You guys can check what's happening with the different OLPC mailing lists here:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

And the developer mailing list which is the most active:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

I've also been able to do some hands on testing stuff on a prototype XO-1.75 which is the Marvell Armada-driven ARM version meant to succeed the XO-1.5 (as well as being the basis for the XO-3). It's been a really interesting experience with the prolonged battery life, but not without its quirks as a "real mainstream linux" OS running on an ARM machine (it's running Fedora ARM, dual bootable to the Sugar UI paradigm or Gnome). If anyone wants to contribute to Fedora-ARM development, this would also be an excellent avenue.

Try to check if there any local groups near your place and check em out. The local group near where I'm at right now (NZ) was kind enough to lend me one of these rare prototypes (and will be returning it soon).

Cheers!

-Naz

Re:Had high hopes for Pixel Qi

[object404]

Don't be misled by those reviews. I was able to borrow some OLPC XO units via the contributors program http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program and let me tell you they kick ass.

If you reduce the brightness of the unit to zero, it will automatically go into gameboy/calculator black and white LCD mode. When the backlight is on (which will activate color), it's still readable in sunlight, will just look black and white.

The only quirk it has is that it uses parallel diagonal strips of red, green and blue pixels separately so there's a dithering effect in backlit color LCD (only 1 R,G or B light per pixel essentially instead of the usaul mix of all 3), but it trumps any of those black & white only no-backlight screens like e-ink.

Re:Good for them

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I didn't know RMS posted to slashdot.

They should have named it XO<3

[Culture20]

XO<3 is like a little kid with a heart above the head. "kids love OLPC!"
They even fail at marketing.

for education, still open source

[spage]

OLPC's customers are educational organizations that can implement "one laptop per child".

A lot of the OLPC software effort is easing the hard work of a deployment: managing reflashing hundreds of machines at once with a new distribution, restoring to a stable image, device backup, school servers, service & repair, etc. That's more involved than "selling low-cost computers" and it's different from "the democratization of computers". Android and ChromeOS have some similar facilities and someone could base large educational rollouts on them, but there's little money in it, so it seems if a non-profit is still the way to go.

You're confused (or writing poorly about fish). OLPC never "jettisoned" Sugar. The OLPC software distribution now offers a choice between the Sugar UI and a Gnome desktop, and supports running a version of Windows XP from SD card; OLPC provided these choices in response to those education customers. Of the 2.5M XO laptops out there, no large deployment is running Microsoft Windows. In many Sugar activities, pressing View Source (Fn + Space) opens up the Python source code (it's pretty cool!), and the source code from the firmware up is readily available.

Re:They're too late and way overpriced for the mar

[rtfa-troll]

Why would any government get involved in a $100+ tablet when they can get them for half, AND manufacture them under license locally, creating jobs in their own countries?

More "sophisticated" answer:

OLPC systems are designed for education. The hardware is designed to be tough enough to last years in a school environment where most hardware is designed to survive just beyond the guarantee period as long as you treat it right. The batteries are designed with different compromises; the don't charge to the maximum so they last much longer, but have a worse headline performance. The main operating system has the full source code under an open source license so the students are guaranteed to be able to modify it if they want to learn how it works. They come with a whole integrated anti-theft system which, combined with their abnormal hardware, makes them much more likely to stay with the school than other systems.

Overall this means that OLPC systems deliver much more for much less total cost. You or I may not know or understand this. We aren't specialists in educational systems. On the other hand education ministries have people who know exactly this stuff. The question then becomes; "why would an education minister buy anything else". The answer to that is either that they have different circumstances (OLPC is not really designed for use with rich students who can be expected to have their own computer at home) or, more often, that the politicians are in bed with big business.