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OLPC To Sell 7-Inch XO Tablet In Wal-Mart
angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child is back in the tablet race, announcing a new 7-inch tablet with the Android OS that will be sold commercially and include its learning software. The XO Tablet was announced at the International CES show in Las Vegas. OLPC will license the design to Sakar International, which will sell the tablet in the U.S. through Wal-Mart."
Walmart is enormous, its workers are paid poorly, and occasionally there's safety issues with their products.
So yes, Walmart has always been a third-world country.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A few years ago when there weren't many choices in the market there was a lot of demand for them to release one of their devices as an inexpensive, low power computing device. That time has passed. Now days the market is flooded with cheap alternatives. They've waited too long, they're way too late. Unfortunately they don't stand a chance.
One antimalarial course per child isn't going to help them get what it takes to stop being third world. That is, information. Teach a man to fish etc
People here are missing the point. This device isn't about the 1st world. When you complain it has no value to your child, consider yourself lucky, because your child has access to a real computer. To your child it has no value. To a kid in the third world where nobody a round him has a computer and he doesn't even get to school more than once a week this device is a godsend.
This device is not competing with mass market tablets. It is designed to be rugged, work well in hard spots (good wifi, mesh networking etc), be powered by hands/solar/etc. Things the first world user doesn't need or get with the device.
This was never more than a novelty for the 1st world. Whatever money they were going to raise has been raised. However any of that was a bonus to begin with.
2nd. This is being brought to the 1st world by an entity other than the OLPC project. If you notice they used the words licensed. If there is somebody to criticize for being late to the party it's the licensee.
For the OLPC project this licensee is just another entity contributing something. It is soaking up whatever cash is left of the novelty. The OPLC project though is not and has never been targeted at the 1st world. Comparing it to cheap tablets devices which are largely crap just isn't a fair comparison. Fortunately it doesn't really matter what anybody here thinks. We aren't the target for this device. What matters is they gain the support and services of the third world, 1st world (but for the third world), and other non-governmental organizations.
If the tablet also has the dual-mode Pixel Qi display, that would be a notable differentiator.
You misunderstand "the OLPC concept" if you think its time has passed.
The First, Second, Third World metaphor goes back to the Cold War. As it was originally applied, The US and Western Europe were First world, and the major Communist countries Second. Third world was originally for low powered nations, but ones the west and the reds were going to struggle over, not ones aready strongly in one camp or the other.
Here's a link - it's just a wiki so I urge people to check the primary sources, but I'm old enough to remember how the term shifted meaning pretty much as described. I heard it in military briefings often enough the wiki discription of the shift accords with my own impressions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
China may have been regarded for a time as 3rd world as the shift took place, but as it stands, it doesn't fit the modern spin, as it's too economically pwerful, and it didn't fit when the term started either, as it was originally one of the twin hubs of the Second world when the terms were coined.
Who is John Cabal?
Cannot help but notice that this is a significant departure from OLPC's original vision. Just consider:
* Uses proprietary software.components
* No sugar-UI (the open source educational UI in use in 3 million XO laptops)
* Seems OLPC just picked a random android tablet off the market and added a green cover to it. Does not look rugged, and easily repairable at all (like all OLPC laptops till date).
* No sunlight reflective screen
* No mention of Negroponte
* Closed door development
If I were squinting hard enough, this wouldn't look like anything OLPC has been involved in ever since it started out.
I've been to Ethiopia. They go to school with Malaria. Like most diseases we see the horror stories. Most people with the disease are walking around with it and while they may have some debilitating symptoms, they aren't life threatening. It's when the person gets a second illness and becomes weak that Malaria gets deadly. I'm not sure of the total political situation there but I believe they are socialist. Their clinics are all free. The children walk in and they get treated for free. The medicine they use however is not totally effective. We took a girl there and they said that the treatment they had (and I have no idea what it was) kept the disease at bay, but it would eventually come back. According to the dr, so may people have the disease that it did little good to cure someone of it, because they'd just catch it again within a year. So instead, they buy this cheaper medication. The girl was getting adopted by an American family and according to the Dr the family could get a cure when they got back to America which they did.