Submitted by The vaunted ‘USD 100 laptop’ that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers dreamed up for international schoolchildren is becoming a slightly more distant concept. The USD 100 laptop has many innovative features including a pull cord for recharging by hand. Leaders of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child that was spun out of MIT acknowledged Friday that the devices are now slated to cost USD 188 when mass production begins this fall. The last price the nonprofit announced was USD 176; it described USD 100 as a long-term goal.
The new gizmo I want most, the eee pc is having the same price inflation.These new gen products almost always end up costing more than their target price. The difference is that I believe that the OLPC will come down in price much faster, as they aren’t trying to make a profit on it.
USD 188 is about 136 EUR.
That sounds cheaper, doesn’t it?
However I guess it doesn’t help.
Or could it?
What do you say?
Edited 2007-09-15 20:43
Don’t forget that the dollar lost a lot of value the past couple of years.
100 dollar was about 100 euro when the olpc laptop was first discussed…so the laptop became 136 euro, only a little bit more.
“The 94 quid laptop” sounds good to me…
The more expensive this non-profit laptop becomes, the more it comes within range of similar commercial products like the Classmate PC. Not that I think the Classmate is equally suitable, but with competitive prices plenty of people will be comparing the two products’ features side-by-side, and I expect many will find the Classmate attractive.
And if the laptops cost twice as much as originally estimated, governments will be able to afford only half as many as they originally planned. Which brings about the dilema of ordering half as many as they want, or skipping it altogether.
I also have doubts as to whether the countries that have committed to 3 million OLPCs will actually follow through with purchases. If I pre-ordered something and the final cost ended up being double the original estimate, there’s a better-than-good chance I would not buy.
I’ve also seen a brief blurb about other similar projects, including and Indian-designed laptop with an estimated production cost of $49. So far it’s only on paper, but it shows the interest in alternative projects. Buy a $200 item, or hold out for a possible $49 item?
What piss me off in these comparison is that usually they compare screen size, CPU and memory, and that’s it.
They don’t take into account that the OLPC was ruggedised, that it’s screen has a ‘readable in outdoor sunlight’ mode, and that it has very low power usage, all three very important caracteristics for the planned usage.
Even a normal much more powerful laptop would be less adequate for the task: after all what good does a laptop when it’s broken due to dust or rain, or when you can’t read the screen?
One Laptop per two children. Still less than $100 per child.
Like schoolkids should have laptops anyway. The ubiquitous cell phone is bad enough, now you’ve got some schmuck kid watching youtube when he should be listening to the lesson.
Friggin’ kids these days.
“””
Like schoolkids should have laptops anyway. The ubiquitous cell phone is bad enough,
“””
*sigh*
I would agree if we were talking about 1st world kids and 1st world schools. If I could round up every cell phone in the U.S. and have them all melted down and recycled into something *useful* I would do it.
But the XO is not a luxury item. It is a lifeline. It is a more cost-effective way to get *books* to the children who need them. It has other benefits as well. But primarily it is a *substitute* for resources which their schools could otherwise not afford.
Paper books are expensive to produce. PDF’s are cheap.
$188 would buy you about 3 paper textbooks here in the U.S.
On half dot com, maybe.
I went to high school in the 1970’s and college in the 1980’s. I’m sure the book store at my alma mater would give me a nasty case of sticker shock today! 😉
I’m only a decade behind you. I’m taking night classes right now, and am just freaking amazed at how expensive my books are. PDFs would kick serious ass – the search function on paper and ink kind of sucks, even with a good index. Of course, DRMed “ebooks” would be the option, not just a standard pdf…
While I still have some trouble with the idea that 3rd world nations need lappys more than they need practical skills or food ($188 would buy a shitload of grains/seeds), so far other approaches don’t seem to be working. Maybe this one will.
“””
While I still have some trouble with the idea that 3rd world nations need lappys more than they need practical skills or food
“””
These devices are targeted at nations which have the food problem more or less nailed down. (Of course, that’s in a relative sense. The U.S. doesn’t have the food problem completely nailed down.)
But it is really a classic case of “Give a man a fish/Teach a man to fish”.
Except it really goes further than that. You see, if you give a fish to a poor, destitute, uneducated man who has never had real opportunities to better himself, he will eat that fish, continue to need supplies, and will have more children than otherwise, who will be in the same bad situation, adding to the problem.
I hope that it does not seem too callous to draw this analogy, but this has something very real in common with the feral cat problems we have in our cities. People who feed the cats, without doing anything about the root causes of the problem, are doing more harm than good. The overall amount of suffering *increases* due to that person’s action of feeding the feral cats.
XO is designed to try to do something about the root causes. It is designed to give people, who are at a disadvantage in the area of improving themselves, a foothold… a way to do so… or at least show them that there *is* a way.
It really does not matter if most of the kids fail to see their value… or abuse them. (Though I suspect we will see a higher level of value put on them by 3rd world kids than by would be put on them by U.S. kids.) If only a few percent of the kids recognize the opportunity availed them, maybe some of them will find a way to make things better in their country… for everyone.
XO is very much a seeding mission. And evaluating the results is going to require patience. (Which may be a problem.) The full bounty of the harvest may take decades to appreciate. Hopefully, the advance indicators will be clear enough that we won’t give up on this strategy due to any perceived lack of immediate results. I hope that we focus on the benefits rather than the inevitable abuses.
Poverty and ignorance have roots which are many thousands of years old… extending, one presumes, well past the dawn of history.
Nothing is going to solve the problem in a day, or a year.
Everyone deserves a chance. If they take it, they benefit; We all do. If they don’t, they do not benefit… and neither do we.
Edited 2007-09-16 18:36
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nomina…
Entries between roughly 64 – 128 would benefit hugely from this scheme, most people in these countries can afford to eat ‘grains/seeds’ or whatever. But good education will allow the country to develop economically over the next few generations.
The OLPC is for places where food, water and basic sanitation are available. Education is the next thing they need to develop a self sustained existance and that’s what OLPC is targeting from what I read. The places that don’t have food and water have bigger issues to resolve than education though knowledge also helps those situations.
As for skills, there was a big trend in international development a while back where humanitarian programs would come into a village, build wells, build sewage, provide farming tools; then leave. With no one having the skills to maintain the wells, sewage systems and such, they all just rotted. When the tractor brakes an no one can fix it; it just sits off to the side and rusts. One of the ideas behind OLPC is that the kids who make use of the machines now become the next generation of engineers. There’s more value in them learning the basic technologies to maintain plumbing and waste management than simply installing a system that none of the locals understands.
It still comes down to education. Some kids will fall in love with the technology and explore the open source to understand how it works and extend it as they wish. Other kids will use the machine only as a window too other information such as engineering, world politics, farming markets.. whatever interest the non-techie kids fall in love with. Heck, even being able to look up fair market value for grains would benefit the farmers.
Ok, let’s go on for a minute and believe that the 3rd world actually *needs* cheap computers….I’ll then ask this, “So what?” To what end will result from our apparent “supreme benevolence” as the most powerful nation giving away virtually-free computers?
For arguements sake, let’s forget that the only reason the 1st world can obtain cheap goods is because the vastly ignorant and poor 3rd world produce our garbage for less than slave wages. Let’s also forget that we (as a “civilized” society) can hardly keep our PCs in check from viruses, malware and the like. Now you’ve got literally hundreds of millions of people, who can hardly afford basic necessesities, expected to now maintain an OS, let alone actually know how to use apps that are loaded on it. And don’t give me “these things are running the Yippy-Skip Linux distro which is the raddest thing known to men and baby cows…no viruses ever!” We all know that’s crap.
This cheap laptop thing tailor targetted to less-fortunate countries is probably the most dumb idea, in a long list of dumb ideas from the computer industry. This can serve no purpose, other than to add to the bottom line of the companies that make these devices.
> Let’s also forget that we (as a “civilized” society) can hardly keep our
> PCs in check from viruses, malware and the like. Now you’ve got
> literally hundreds of millions of people, who can hardly afford basic
> necessesities, expected to now maintain an OS, let alone actually know
> how to use apps that are loaded on it.
These people are _poor_, not _stupid_. At least no more than people in the first world are (although that gives rise to concerns too).
“virtually-free computers”.
I don’t consider $188 virtually free, that is about what the average citizen of Malawi makes in a year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nomina… + inflation).
You also forget that these laptops are going to children, who tend to be really very competent when it comes to figuring out how to work things. In societies where people have to still do most things by themselves, not rely on welfare, councils, professionals or expensive technicians.
We all know that’s crap
Actually, it isn’t crap. There is almost no malware for desktop Linux software on the internet. And while I’m sure that there will be interest from virus developers in entering the OLPC system, most OLPCs won’t be connected to the internet, just some ad-hoc wireless network, so infection rates should be low, and containable. Also, as mentioned above, these people are usually, by necessity, pretty resourcefull as a group.
99% of modern malware is marketing related. Spam and spyware are used to generate revenue for malware writers. Targeting people whose average annual earnings are around $1000 will not be such a profitable venture. I’m sure that people will try, but they should loose interest pretty early.
Now try to look at the positive side of this. We will be placing enormous computing power into the hands of millions of potential geniuses around the world, the number of man-hours (well, child-hours) spend tinkering and playing with these systems will be phenomenal. Imagine some of the advances that could be made in computer science, and software development if this project goes through.
Oh how I wish that was only the case but alas…
I see people here who lives in shanty towns and can hardly support their families yet they have at least one cellphone. People of all ages, genders and classes are text messaging like there’s no damn tomorrow.
Lets not even get started on the curse that is Internet cafes (or CounterStrike/MMO cafes, as it would be).
Presuming these laptop even reach the schools, that is. If the target countries are anything like here corruption will run pretty rampant and I somehow doubt they would reach their intended schools. Seeing the abysmal conditions that schools in the poor provinces here are in I doubt a laptop is much help anyway. How about paying teachers a salary they can actually live on? School improvement projects where 50% of the budget doesn’t go to someones pocket? Seriously, I see the budget of projects here, school and otherwise, and think “Holy shit, that would be way over budget in Sweden for this kind of project. Even if you convert from pesos to dollars. And Sweden is an expensive high-salary country!”.
No doubt there are, at least some, noble intention behind this but there are just SO many other things urgently in need of fixing in these places.
I see people here who lives in shanty towns and can hardly support their families yet they have at least one cellphone.
I see homeless people who beg on the stree who have cellphones. And personally I think it’s a good thing. Cell phones cost almost nothing and are vital if you hope to pull yourself out of the gutter. How to you expect to apply for a job for example if your prospective employer cannot contact you, to take a simple example. It is also easier to look for work and housing by making phone calls rather than walking all over town from place to place.
Most people who say that mobile phones are useless generally have a land line and internet connection both at home and at work as well as an address which one can send mail to. If you had non of those things you’d probably start seeing more value in a mobile phone.
“Most people who say that mobile phones are useless ”
I never said they where useless, I pointed out that cellphones are common in the 3rd world too.
Your forgetting that this is a project to provide education and open information to children who live where books are expensive and do not stand up to the weather very well.
Hm.. a book that cost the school a lot of money, must be leant out if able to leave the building at all and turns to mush in the first rain storm or a notebook the child owns, can carry through rain and sand storms, runs on little power and provides an open window to information.
Yeah.. it’s all about getting tech into kids hands huh? Maybe consider the goals of the project rather than the hardware component that supports those goals.
I’d be more polite but I can’t stand when someone too free with there opinion bashes a project like this without having any clue what it’s really about.
“How would I recommend the children learn.” – Are you joking…..wtf!?! You’re right, the obvious problem with education today is that not every kid has a laptop. 20 years ago, how did kids learn? Here’s a hint: NOT ON LAPTOPS!
So let me be crystal clear with this proposal, these kids can’t afford shoes or running water, but they’ll be able to plug in their shiny-new rugged laptops into their electrical outlets to charge up, and then connect to their local ISP because their families obviously have the income to afford that? Am I getting this right?
Seriously, though, you can’t get the impoverished too smart; they might just figure out how our great nation has been f’ing them for all this time.
Phloptical,
You are being crude. You are being shortsighted. And I am embarrassed for you.
I can tell you how I, as a child, learned 30 or 40 years ago: from books.
But I’m tasking you with the responsibility to get books to these children. Do you want to raise the money to send them in paper form, year after year? Or would it make more sense to make it possible for them to receive all the books that they will need for their ongoing education in electronic form? Your choice.
The devices do not require electrical outlets. The mesh networking means that the Internet connection can be shared by the members of the community in which the children live. No need for the family to pay for a broadband connection.
Your still thinking of this project as servicing US and other first world countries; It doesn’t. Stop focusing on the hardware component and consider the overall goals.
In places that this project is targeting Food, Water and Sanitation is just barely covered. Books or expensive luxuries that only the schools can afford to stock. That means no lending books out for students to carry home and back. That means the information source (books) turn to mush when they get soaked in monsoons and distroyed when they get left to sand storms.
Gee, for all the books that these schools have available; they’re still not doing so well now are they? There’d be no call for such a project as the OLPC if they where doing well. Third world farmers would not be getting offered below market value for there harvest. Third world children would be engineering there nations out of national poverty. This is not happening.
“20 years ago, how did kids learn? Here’s a hint: NOT ON LAPTOPS!”
Stop thinking of this as a technology project. Stop thinking of this in terms of American over-privaledged schools. Just for a moment, consider this as an education project. Just for a moment, consider the benifits of text books destributed as PDF and housed inside a ruggedized, power efficient, dailight readable box.
This is not issuing cell phones to over-privaledged American pre-teens. This is not big corporations saturating an untapped market with products to boost there gross profit and hook another generation of consumers. This is not Microsoft pushing for a cellphone/tv/keboard combination to open a new market to it’s OS lock-in strategies. The hardware is purely to support the end goal wich is EDCATION WHERE BOOKS, PAPER and PENCIL are expensive and poorly suited to the tasks.
Again, I ask.. given villages in jungles, deserts and other harsh environments where access to a school house may mean a days walk in cases; how would you provide information efficiently to the broadest possible student body in a manner not easily destroyed by weather conditions?
Come on now, we’ll wait.. give us a few alternatives to the OLPC.
You show a distinct bias against laptops and in a first world nation with our generaly spoiled younger generations that’s a very valid sentiment. By applying that sentiment to the OLPC *you* miss the whole point and ignore the true goals and challenges. That’s your loss.
(edit); I missed resonding to some of your ignorance.
”
So let me be crystal clear with this proposal, these kids can’t afford shoes or running water, but they’ll be able to plug in their shiny-new rugged laptops into their electrical outlets to charge up, and then connect to their local ISP because their families obviously have the income to afford that? Am I getting this right?
”
First, the machines are power efficient; they run for a few days off a battery charge without needing sleep mode. You maybe know of another general purpose notebook that does the same? They can be charged by solar cell, crank generator or wall socket in the very few places that may offer a luxury such as wired electricity.
Second, they primarily use an ad-hoc networking method. The school may have a server with all text books digitally available. Each OLPC will link together extending it’s own small network cloud which may or may not reach that school server; it will join multiple students together though.
Third, students who can’t afford shoes are not expected to pay for the machienes. A) That’s why they are targeting a 100$~200$ price point. B) That’s why they are only selling them to *GOVERNMENTS* who will then distribute them to schools and children.
Security considerations have been addressed in both the case of the ad-hoc networking and potential for thieft. That’s why they are a nice bright and noticable colour; by the way.
Seriously, you’ve demonstraited that you know nothing about the project at all. You saw the word “notebook” and “children” in the same paragraph and decided to have a little rant and troll with your uneducationed opinion.
Do some reading and actually understand the hardware, project and reasoning behind it before you open your mouth again. Here, I’ll help cause I hate to see a potentially intelligent mind go to waste:
The root page
http://olpc.com/
The quick overview (note: “intended for use by children *in developing nations*. The laptop is poised *to empower and educate* children through the use of technology”)
http://olpc.com/quick-facts.html
The FAQ you should read before opening your mouth again:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:OLPC_FAQ
Edited 2007-09-17 14:26
If they can keep it in production, the prce should drop to under $100 within a year, the way electronics work.
I know even at $188 I’m still buying one.
for real! the US dollar value is declining. No surprise the cost of OLPC components in US dollar are going up.
It’s a FM…
If we just billed them all to major companies who are cashing in on the wired (and wireless) society, it wouldn’t matter. You count up the orders, divvy the costs by corporate net worth, and send the bills to the telecoms and dotcoms, plus a few large software houses. Heck, if everyone here who owned more than one computer (mea culpa) sold their extras and donated the proceeds, that’d get a couple of dozen out the door, I wager. Of course, you’d have to be one of those who believes in the project and its objective, naturally.
Send the bills to big telecoms/it firms anyway, and see if the accounts departments notice
.
Like they say at the BINGO parlors… bingo!
OLPC always seemed like a scam to me. Not because the world doesn’t need cheap school computers (It does even in 1st world countries) but because they were constantly claiming that 100$ price tag. Even the name its self gives me that “think of the children!”.
It gives me the impression that they are trying to get world leaders to sign up then jack up the price to what it actually costs hoping that they wont break the agreement do to bad PR “Look he canceled the laptops for children, he is evil! think of the children!”
If you could make and sell a laptop for 100$ (esp with the things OLPC claims are going to be on it webcam etc.) Some company in china would already be making them and selling them for less then 100
Think a minute.
– Will those companies do an intensive test of these devices in a harsh environment?
– Will the box be rugged enough? Will the screen be readable on a sunlight?
– Can a 10 years old kid repair this laptop?
– Will it have at least three USB ports for different usage?
– Can it use different methods of recharging a battery?
Those are the criteria those companies need to address. I have seen a $10 device made in India but it is not as versatile compared to the XO.
This technology sits at the top of a socio-political iceberg 9/10s of which isn’t readily visible, tangible, or, to the average geek, ‘cool’.
I really do not know where to begin but I will have a go:
It’s not esy at all to divide countires into those who have ‘nailed’ the food problem and those who haven’t: places like China even have wealth and poverty, plenty and scarcity – famously, Ethiopia, during the famine that spawned that other fatuous and near-sighted reaction, Band-Aid, had southern regions of the country that knew nothing about these problems, or could be unconcerned in their regard.
Global power, warfare and consumption – let’s not lavish OLPCs, but peace, security and a reconfiguration of needs and consumption over the span of the entire globe – otherwise this is a cherry on top of a pretty stale cake, or, to go back to the previous analogy, a picture-book snowman on an iceberg capable of sinking continents, over and over and over again.
Although I fully support the efforts of the OLPC project and find all their ideas appear to make sense. I can’t help being reminded of the AfiCar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africar) – this was a project to design a Car for Africa, today you are far more likely to find the ubiquitous Toyota Hi-Lux than this “designed for purpose” automobile.
Maybe similarly the solution in this case will come from a trickle down of 1st world equipment. However I’m sure that ad-hoc peer to peer networking and ruggedization are features that have some 1st world applications too.
There are 10 million children UNINSURED only in US of A.
Ask your consciousness, what would you prefer for your OWN kids, a laptop or better health care.
Mr Negroponte and Mr Bush have same priorities. Ignore reality and drumbeat the illusions..
Well. In the civilised world, we have a national health service.
[ducks for cover]
I’ve just read that the Asus EEEpc will be released at the end of this month, with a pricetag of $199. That comes second-hand from the Asus customer service phone line.
The EEEpc has many price-saving and energy-saving features that are similar to the OLPC. With only a $10 difference, it now becomes a strong competitor to the OLPC. Plus, if it’s ready on schedule, it’ll have the large advantage of being a semi-established product by the time the OLPC is actually shipped.
You’re assuming it will be used in areas where electricity is available and so on. The OLPC is designed for even more backward places than what Asus laptops will be used in.
It may be something to be moved up to when civilization catches up to the third world, however. Not to mention that businesses will need computers to do bookkeeping on after the kids graduate and become professionals.
You’re assuming it will be used in areas where electricity is available and so on. The OLPC is designed for even more backward places than what Asus laptops will be used in.
I realize that each product has advantages and disadvantages. The OLPC machines were also being considered by some American states and other developed areas where nearly everyone has access to electricity. For these instances the OLPC needs to be competitive as a complete unit (screen size, capability, price, compatibility, etc.), not just an electricity-independant gadget.
The more options the better though. There’s far too much poverty to go around and in reality, one project is not going to fix everything. Maybe the OLPC get’s the harsher environments and the EEE gets the slightly more developed places.