Apr 28, 2007, 1:04 GMT
San Francisco - The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme that aims to provide an innovative portable computer to poor children around the world is running into difficulties that have forced major changes to the initiative, according to reports Friday.
The small computers, which were originally meant to run on an open-source operating system and sell for 100 dollars each, will now also run a version of Microsoft's Windows operating system and cost 175 dollars each, Fortune magazine reported Friday.
The Fortune report quoted project creator Nicholas Negroponte as saying he had still not succeeded in landing the 3 million orders for OLPC that were needed to get production started, prompting a new strategy to also market the laptops to state governments in the US.
'We need to trigger a supply chain for three million units to get started, and need a few large agreements to kick it off,' Negroponte said.
He said the project was now 'at the most critical stage of its life,' but he remained optimistic about its prospects, adding that new countries, including Peru and Russia, have inquired about taking part. He said he was hopeful that the price would drop to 100 dollars per unit once sufficient volume was reached.
In addition, the rising cost of materials - in particular nickel - was responsible for the increased price of the machine. The roll-out had also been pushed back because of changes in the design, which were 'not unusual in technology development projects.'
The lime-green-and-white devices feature a string pulley to charge its batteries, with a minute of yanking yielding 10 minutes of electricity. The computer relies on flash memory rather than a disk drive, and features a digital video camera, wireless connectivity and Linux open-source operating software tailored for remote regions. The display can switch from colour to black-and-white for viewing in direct sunlight and the computer uses just two watts of power compared to the typical laptop's 30 to 40 watts.
2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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Considering he turned Apple down (and they were offering OS X for FREE), I'm surprised he went with Microsoft.
Also, didn't microsoft launch a new pricing scheme 2.50 for Windows for developing countries?
I think we may be in monopoly land again.
In addition, Isn't $75 quite a bit more than Microsoft currently gets from Dell for every copy of Windows XP on their PC's?
Isn't charging $3.00 per os akin to 'dumping' in international markets? One also wonders what virus/spam land will be like with millions of laptops running windows. Hope Norton or adaware is 'donating' too. Otherwise, Botnets for the masses.
Everyone should get behind this project! Giving children in poor countries access to technology will eventually help to reduce the gap between the have and have nots. This will help to bring more peace in the world.
Computers for the masses - good idea.
Next on the list should be clean drinking water and electricity.
What language do the computers use?
If it's english, then that limits their use to the literate english speakers.
Also, considering that this is run as a businesses (so has to be profitable) I hope it hasn't passed you by that the main money spinner here is selling Windows/ Linux servers to every school and organisation that signs-up to this scheme.
OLPC runs Linux which has tons of different language packs for it. I guarantee that it will have every language necessary, and since it is all supposed to be open source new translations should be easy to create.
Food and water are important, but education is equally important. If this pc helps improve industry in a country, drought and famine because a smaller issue. Besides, 175 dollars for one laptop and using free ebooks is significantly cheaper than buying tons of text books. This machine will save money and provide better education for students.
And then microsoft stepped in (even though it had previously denounced the project). I am very unhappy about this. The reason that linux was chosen was because it has strong interoperability, language support, and source code availability. Wouldn't it be great if kids could learn how to use their computers and learn programming? Imagine a world where kids learn to fix the operating system instead of writing viruses for it. Yeah, it won't happen with every kid, but it only needs to be a few and something great can happen. If windows is installed, the kids will be spending their time worrying about viruses and spending no time learning the fundamentals of computing.
It doesn't say the additonal $75 is due to the O/S change.
Negraponte is bringing an academic naivete to this problem, that has surpassed all others. What is the research behind this stupid program?
Oh: 'These are poor people that can't afford computers so let's make them a cheaper version to let cross the digital divide??' Huh. Is that it?
3 billion people in the world have cell phones, and these are at least a hundred dollars each. So we are targeting children who are in school but can't afford computers. The argument and the logic behind this program are completely twisted.
The target audience for this program is very illusive, and does not add up. BTW, there are fully functioning laptops for $200-$300 from all the major computer companies. It is better to focus on the ecnomies of scale rather than reinventing the wheel. Walmart has branded full computers for around $400. If they can do it, so does anybody.
The problem that this tries to solve is ill defined, and the solution is plain stupid.
I agree with talkback - although education for poor kids around the world is a wonderful idea, a $175 laptop with a string you pull for power sounds like a cute Western idea that will end up having turned $525M into e-waste. No wonder he's having trouble finding buyers.
Talkback idiot. They are not trying to provide laptops so the kids can have cool toys, like a cel phone. They are trying to provide $100 laptops because it is cheaper to deliver education to a country's children in this form than it would be to provide all the necessary school books to these children. The computers can be used to stream lessons and curriculum from a central education board to the teachers to the kids in a more economical manner than school books.
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