Those crazy Europeans will be able to buy an XO Laptop, too. Amazon’s Euro stores will sell the little guy for £263 (or €313 or $390). That’s strange, considering the One Laptop Per Child program was initially billed as the $100 laptop. What are you gonna do? The Guardian, home of the Football Weekly podcast, calls the whole program a “flop,” noting that it has fallen well short of its 100 million laptops sold goal. (To date, about 600,000 has been sold.) And what does your Euros and Pounds gets you? A 433MHz AMD processor, 256MB of RAM and a pack of gum. Yes, it’s underpowered for the money, but you’re also Doing Good—it’s part of the get one, give one program—by buying it, so there’s that. → Read More
The OLPC program just got a lot more mainstream, with word that Amazon will start selling the XO Laptop starting in November. It’ll be sold as part of the “Give One, Get One” program, meaning that for every XO Laptop you buy, one lucky youngster in a developing country will get one, too. (You’re actually paying for two laptops.) You’re doing charitable work with literally zero extra effort on your part. What’s sorta weird is that the sales are currently only scheduled to continue through the end of December. Guess they’re counting on people’s Christmas Cheer, and rampant credit card debt, to help out the OLPC program. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. In other OLPC news, it looks like a version of the XO Laptop that ships with, and dual boots into, Linux and Windows XP, is scheduled to ship in the next month (or so). That’s what an OLPC rep has said, adding that the new dual boot XO Laptop should help speed adoption rates around the world. → Read More
Dailymotion, sorta the YouTube of Europe, has inked a deal with the much-maligned OLPC folks to “explore collaborations involving Dailymotion’s technology and selected educational content to benefit underprivileged children globally.” Sounds important. Unnecessary snark aside, it actually sounds like one of those “good causes” I like so much. The deal is such that the OLPC folks can now benefit from Dailymotion’s infrastructure to have kids create and share videos of their experiences using the built-in camera in the XO Laptop. To that end, Dailymotion has even gone to the trouble of creating a subdomain, olpc.dailymotion.com (that’s for XO Laptop users, regular folk will have to use dailymotion.com/group/olpc), where you’ll find all sorts of educational goodness. But, since online it’s “cool” to hate on the OLPC folks for trying something different, maybe we should just tease them for each and every effort they make. → Read More
It’s no secret that Intel and the OLPC project parted ways a while back, and now I think we can cross the OS off the list of things Intel didn’t like about the project. Sugar Labs, which split off from OLPC as well, has shacked up with Intel to provide a kid-friendly interface for Intel’s Classmate PC. Good news for everyone involved, I’d say. I always liked the idea of Sugar, though I was under the impression it had been built around the capabilities of the XO laptop. Of course, I’m sure they’re capable of refitting it, and if Intel thinks it would work for their machine, I’m sure it will. Apparently Sugar Labs is also working with a few other PC makers, though they were not specified. Maybe they’re going to be the developer of choice for the growing “tiny PC” market? → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A//blip.tv/rss/flash/930327&feedurl=http%3A//crunchgear.blip.tv/rss/&autostart=false&brandname=CrunchGear&brandlink=http%3A//crunchgear.blip.tv/ I’m glad that the second generation OLPC is more of an ebook than a laptop. While the “laptop,” as a designed object, is an excellent tool, books are what define our early education and creating an electronic book that works and is actively useful seems far more intelligent than the original OLPC, which was a stab at a “less is more” mentality that eventually hobbles the very people it is designed to help. I consistently recall a very interesting statistic from Freakonomics: the single, traceable correlation between a child’s abilities in school and his home life are the number of books a family has in their home. I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve taken it to heart and I believe it to be true. A laptop is an interactive tool. An ebook, even if it’s just a glorified, dual screen laptop, is a reading tool. That is why tablet PCs never took off in the mainstream: people don’t know what to do with a form factor that is clearly not a laptop yet is also clearly a powerful computer. There is no way to connect the act of “scratching out words on a tablet” to processing worksheets in a spreadsheet. Why doesn’t the iPhone have handwriting recognition? Because it’s a horrible way to talk to a computer, even now. → Read More
Here is the the next-generation OLPC. It will consist of dual touchscreens on a single spine and include keyboard, face-to-face, and ebook functionality. The touchscreens will be built by a start-up by former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. These screens will be readable in direct sunlight, just like the OLPC. I’m glad that the second generation OLPC is more of an ebook than a laptop. While the “laptop,” as a designed object, is an excellent tool, books are what define our early education and creating an electronic book that works and is actively useful seems far more intelligent than the original OLPC, which is a stab at a “less is more” mentality that eventually hobbles the very people it is designed to help. I remember a very interesting statistic from Freakonomics: the single, traceable correlation between a child’s ability in school and his home life are the number of books a family has in their home. I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve taken it to heart and I believe it to be true. A laptop is an interactive tool. An ebook, even if it’s just a glorified, dual screen laptop, is a reading tool. That is why tablet PCs never took off in the mainstream: people don’t know what to do with a form factor that is clearly not a laptop yet is also clearly a powerful computer. There is no way to connect the act of “scratching out words on a tablet” to processing worksheets in a spreadsheet. Why doesn’t the iPhone have handwriting recognition? Because it’s a horrible way to talk to a computer, even now. But that’s a different rant entirely. That said, I worry about the project as a whole. Read more plus video… CrunchBase Information PixelQi One Laptop Per Child Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
If the first OLPC XO laptop was considered a fashion item, just think how popular this thing will be. Of course, at the moment it’s only a little bit more real than fairy dust, and the idea that it will cost $75 in 2010 is laughable, but you have to admire the project’s ambition. At half the size of the original OLPC, the new XO DS (as I’m calling it) will sport dual touchscreens and draw only 1 watt of power. Now, call me pessimistic, but something here is going to have to give. Either the price, the power, or the features will not be as described today. Still, it’s a sexy little device and possibly more practical than the original. Picture jacked on short notice from HardOCP. → Read More
The XO Laptop (or the OLPC, whatever you want to call it) will now run Windows, giving children around the world the opportunity to dislike Microsoft as much as we do. I think we alluded to the sort of problems they’ll have in last week’s Sweater Friends. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said the use of Windows “enhances [its] ability” to “transform education,” one BSOD at a time. I don’t know, as a tech guy I’m supposed to applaud the program—hooray, computers in the third world—but I’m also supposed to hate M$. I really am torn. → Read More
Microsoft has unveiled a plan under which a somewhat crippled version of XP will be made available to the makers of low-cost PCs like the Eee PC and XO laptop. I’m not sure how I feel about this; at $25 it’s practically free, but the arbitrary hardware limitations Microsoft is imposing are, I think, kind of despicable: the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs…the systems can have no more than 1G byte of RAM and a single-core processor running at no more than 1GHz. Really? Single core? No touchscreens? Limiting the damn screen size? What Microsoft has just done is make sure that the most advanced UMPCs and low-cost computers won’t be running Windows. They’re trying to set up the low-cost PC as a separate market, and so it is, but they can’t simple draw a box around the hardware and say “fit this.” It’s not their job. And I really don’t think the Eee PC is going to cannibalize Vista sales, guys, so don’t worry about it. I have no doubt this will grease the wheels and get more low-cost PCs to market and to the people who need them in developing countries, but at the same time it’s very much Microsoft playing 800-lb gorilla. → Read More
The XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project was originally supposed to make inroads into the developing world and low-income areas for the free and open source community. But OLPC’s founder thinks that the Sugar OS is scaring off investors and buyers alike. He says: "One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist." Which is true, but I think that’s a bit disingenuous when you’re ostensibly trying to provide simple, efficient, and low-cost computing to people who’ve never seen a mouse before. He complains that Sugar doesn’t support the latest Flash framework, required for many children’s sites, but can’t they just push a patch out? I’d guess there’s a lot more to it than that, and a proven OS might draw a few more investors. Open Source and Linux are definitely entering the mainstream, but I think compromises like this will have to be expected for a long time to come. → Read More
It was just a matter of time before someone overclocked the hell out of one of these things. Thanks to a user named bdleonard over at the OLPC News Forum, you can really kick that 433MHz AMD Geode up a couple notches. One user was able to get his humming along at 566MHz, although he did report that the back of the screen got “noticeably warmer.” Anyway, it’s not for the faint of heart and if you’re a small child reading this post from an OLPC, don’t try this without your parents’ permission. Although you’re reading CrunchGear, your parents probably mailed it in quite some time ago — maybe go get them a carton of smokes instead of relying on their overclocking judgment. How to overclock your OLPC [OLPC News Forums] → Read More
Actually, this is the Austrian OLPC group’s booth. Nothing to see here but it’s cool that the Germanics are taking an interest in this project. → Read More
Move over OLPC, here comes another “ONE.” That was terrible, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Coming February 28th to the toughest, meanest industry show in all of the United Kingdom (Education Show 2008), the ONE is setting up to bear its lower-power, open-source fangs for all the world to see. Details include this beautiful stick-figure-computer photo, a £99 price tag (about $195), three-hour battery life, Wi-Fi, flash memory hard drive, tough outer shell, and a “wireless music server,” according to ZDNet UK. It’ll also supposedly weigh less than one kilogram (remember from science class that one kilogram equals 2.2 pounds) so it’ll be very portable. It’s aimed students in the hopes that it’ll be able to “close the gap between those from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers,” according to a company spokesperson. For every 100 devices that are sold, one device will be given to an underprivileged child for free. UK’s Elonex releases £99 OLPC rival [ZDNet UK] via Pocket-lint → Read More
Ever a trustable resource, The Register has completed its full review of the OLPC XO laptop. The verdict? I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Actually, I do: they are pleased, but cautious and critical of several bits. The browser is lacking somewhat (though Opera has an XO port), the flat file browsing scheme (no folders or containers) is unintuitive for most people who have grown up with folders, and the unit they had started freaking out after a few days. Other than that, they thought it was a cool device with lots of potential, but with the requisite hitches associated with first-generation hardware. Read the whole 7-page affair below. The OLPC XO Laptop [The Register] → Read More
The OLPC is setting up base in DC and looking to get their low cost laptops into the hands of America’s youth based on three major factors. I never knew patriotism had anything to do with empowering youth with the Internet, but that’s one reason the OLPC is coming to America. By bringing the project stateside, they’ll be building ‘critical mass’ as the development community will explode here. The last factor should be the first, in my opinion, and that is to connect children in America and those in developing countries to help broaden their horizons. On another note, the OLPC says they would welcome Intel back with loving arms if the two parties can settle some differences. “It was very unfortunate what happened with Intel and I hope there’s a way of rebuilding it in the future because there’s no interest in OLPC pushing Intel out. It just is not in our interest. Our goal is to get this to as many children as possible,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview. One Laptop Per Child Project Extends to American Students [PC World] Laptop Project Would Welcome Intel Back [PC World] → Read More
A week ago, Intel announced that it was leaving the OLPC project due to various disagreements between the two groups. OLPC software and content president Walter Bender doesn’t seem too misty-eyed about it. When asked by ABC News what effect Intel’s departure would have on the program, Bender replied, “Zero. Intel had contributed nothing. They contributed nothing to our current product, the XO. They contributed nothing to our learning models. They contributed nothing to the software. So their going away, so far, is a wash for us.” So will we see Intel-based XO laptops? Signs point really hard to “no”. Will Walter Bender and Paul Otellini keep the OLPC/Intel bowling team alive, even? Things aren’t looking good for the Pin Benders, unfortunately. It’s a shame because that was probably a pretty good bowling team if it indeed existed (which it probably didn’t). Laptop Program to Intel: Good Riddance [ABC News] → Read More
Mary Lou Jepsen, former chief technology officer of the One Laptop Per Child project, has spun off a company called Pixel Qi in the hopes of creating a $75 laptop. Jepsen was the brains behind the OLPC’s sunlight-readable display and had a hand in the development of various power saving features. Pixel Qi and the OLPC project will work amicably, as Pixel Qi has offered to “give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.” So will a $75 laptop really be possible? Maybe, but let’s all remember that the OLPC was supposed to cost $100 and after all was said and done, it settled at around $186. Perhaps we might be looking forward to a $139.50 laptop from Pixel Qi instead. Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see this company develop. They’re located right down the street from me here in Boston (I think) so I’ll see what other information I can rustle up over the coming months. Pixel Qi [Company Website] via The Boston Globe → Read More
One of the fun things about expos like CES is seeing what kind of crazy Wi-Fi networks show up. Right now, we’re in the Blogger’s Lounge using one called “BLOGGERS” (yesterday it was “BLOOGERS”). Earlier, I found an OLPC mesh server, but sadly I didn’t have the password → Read More
