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

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

[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.

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: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.