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OLPC Now Distributes Kid-Friendly Tablets, Not Just Notebooks (Video)
Giulia D'Amico, Business Development VP for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) talks about the new OLPC tablets, which are now available in the U.S. through Target, Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers, with some of the $150 sales price for each tablet going to support the OLPC project in places like Uruguay, Cambodia, Rwanda, and other countries where a tablet loaded with teaching software is a way better deal than trying to supply all the books a child needs for six or eight years of school. While there are many Android tablets for sale for less than $150, Giulia points out that the OLPC tablets contain up to $300 worth of software. Plus, of course, just as with almost any other Android device, there are many thousands of apps available for it through Google Play. And let's not forget the original OLPC laptop. It has been redesigned, and renamed the OLPC XO-4 and looks much cooler than the original. You can learn more about it through olpc.tv, which has videos from the introduction of both the OPLC tablet and the XO-4 at CES 2013. OLPC has shipped close to 3 million laptops so far, and is working to port Sugar to Android so that the laptop and the tablet can use the same software. One more thing: OLPC is now focusing on software rather than hardware. When the project started at MIT, back in 2006 or so, there was no suitable hardware available. Today, many companies make low-cost tablets and keyboards for them, so there's no real need for OLPC to make its own instead of using existing hardware.
So I take it they've made the entire tablet out of the same material they make airplane black boxes out of? Because I've seen children destroy things that were made out of die-cast titanium without even realizing it, let alone feeling sorry about it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is anyone buying this? I doubt very much that there is any of that supposed $300 worth of software that there isn't as good or better free alternatives for. And this was supposed to be an organization that was based on free and open software. As the summary points out, there are many Android tablets available at far less than $150. And those are produced by "for profit" companies, not supposed non-profits (although I expect some pay their chief executives less that the OLPC executives skim off the top).
I see this as just another OLPC fail, at least as long as your not one of the ones cashing those OLPC paychecks.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes, it was a program put in place to trade laptops for children. That business model struggled, as the management team failed to account for the costs to feed all the children it received in trade. They are hoping that the new business model offering one tablet per child will be more profitable.
I travel a lot around the world in 3rd world countries helping the poor. I don't think their challenge is in manufacturing or getting these out to the field. The challenge will be finding a way for the tablets to not be immediately sold for cash when the people are in need of food and medicine to survive. Heck, pass these out for free in the 1st world conditions and where will they end up. I'm sorry, but it would be nice to help the kids and schools and teachers, but none of these will be in a classroom 1 year after they are given out.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Last year my sister-in-law in Peru finally retired the Windows 95 laptop that we gave her in 2001, when we gave her a new laptop. My niece is still using the second-hand laptop that we gave her in 2006. IOW, they'll last a frack of a lot longer there than they would here, people will treat them with care because they're (comparatively) expensive and important.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
OLPC should be working with the Raspberry Pi people to create a rugged cheap complete solution. Change the flimsy GPIO Pins to a standard Parallel connector and enclose it with a decent LCD screen with keyboard and USB mouse and you'd have a far more useful and productive device.
You seem very confused. The Rasberry Pi people made something that people actually wanted. That's how they achieved success. But that is the evil capitalistic way of doing things.
The OLPC gang took a philosophically different approach. They went for "Think of the Children" and talked about building a $100 laptop that starving kids in third world countries could hold while they starved. They got corporate sponsors to buy into the "Think of the Children" philosophy. They convinced some chumps to think of the children and buy two laptops (that never met the promised $100 price, although they have plenty of excuses for that) so that one could be given to the starving children. They may have even delivered some of the paid for units to corrupt dictators of third world countries with starving children, although they likely never reached the children. They convinced other governments to "think of the children" and made shady deals with big corporations that seemed to many to be in direct conflict with the stated goals. The OLPC approach is completely opposite of that of the Pi people.
I kind of suspect that the OLPC gang has some knowledge of the existence of the Raspberry PI and that they knew about it even before you made your suggestion. So might General Motors. But neither organization see the Pi has having anything to do with what their business does.
Actually, the Pi wouldn't be cost effective to build on for your stated project. It includes an HDMI interface and there is a hefty HDMI "tax" to be paid for any device with an HDMI interface. No point in including that if the goal is to keep costs low and it isn't needed. But the approaches taken by the Rasberry Pi people are openly documented. OLPC could take them as a starting point if their goad was to build something that people actually wanted and would actually be useful. But having watched OLPC since it's inception, I have no reason to think they would have any real intention to do that.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.