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One Laptop Per Child Project

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sandgk

sandgk

Watson, Crick & A Twist
Bill Gates and the OLPC Project

Perhaps he is right, perhaps Bill is simply out of touch with reality, still he came out swinging against an innovative approach to help bring computing to the masses.

This dismissive brush-off to the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) came while Gates was shwoing off his latest toys, the much more expensive, but equally small screened Origami mobile computers.
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Faces In The News
Gates Pours Water On $100 Laptop
Parmy Olson, 03.16.06, 11:40 AM ETLondon - Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, give him a $100 laptop and he'll likely spend a week trying to make out what's on its tiny screen.

So seemed the gist of recent remarks from the linchpin of our billionaires list, Bill Gates. Having pumped well over half of his $50 billion fortune into charitable causes, many in aide of the developing world, the seasoned philanthropist didn't shy from ribbing the lime-green computer, which can be powered by turning a crank.

"The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk… and with a tiny little screen," Gates was quoted in press reports as saying at a forum yesterday. The $100 device has been developed by the folks at One Laptop Per Child at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is backed by funding from <org>Google</org>.

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user," Gates suggested, "geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type."

Kofi Anan may have heaped praise on the machine as "expression of global solidarity," but others in the business of making computers have taken a more cynical view. <org>Intel</org>'s chairman
<name.given>Craig</name.given><name.family>Barrett</name.family>Craig Barrett</person> recently dismissed the device as a "$100 gadget," saying that a computer's features were more important than its price.

Gates seems to be on a similar page. Hardware was just a small part of the cost, he said, while network connectivity, applications and support were the real expenses. <org>Microsoft</org>'s new ultra-mobile Origami, which Gates incidentally showed off before making his remarks, can cost up to $999. No doubt savvy on his target audience, it's unlikely the Microsoft chairman will be pitting the tiny tablet PC against the $100 laptop, though it's anyone's guess if he has similar project up his sleeve.

One Laptop Per Child did not wish to comment on Gates' remarks, though it did say its first machines will be distributed in 2007.
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Here are some of the concept designs for the OLPC computer, which is being developed by folks with fairly well established pedigrees at MIT's media labs, it uses a custom RedHar Linux kernel

A crank-powered design
tn-laptop-crank.jpg


A twistable screen design, power on-board.
tn-yellow-pivot.jpg

Another power on-board or crank design basis.
tn-blue-front.jpg


Now color me stupid if you wish, but could it be that Gates is A - scared of this project, or B-simply out of touch with reality. The target audience for these nifty products of the MIT based OLPC project are not ones who would be able to get enough money to afford a full fledged notebook.

So why to squash a gant?
 
The only thing he's afraid of is loosing all that $$$ from everyone who is going to get a $100 laptop with a free distribution of linux on it. He probably can't stand the thought of somebody releasing that many computers without any intention of Window$ going on them.

On a separate note, I think the project is outstanding.
 
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One Laptop per Child" Vision Almost a RealityNicholas Negroponte's "One Laptop Per Child" dream of creating 100 dollar notebook computers for the world's poorest children, is rapidly gaining popularity with academics, journalists and world leaders.


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Indeed, Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, and education Minster Tarso Genro, met with Negroponte in July to discuss the idea - Genro was quoted as saying:

".....It's a revolutionary project, that compliments all the orientation we have received from the president....."

The one laptop per child concept is in harmony with Brazil's idea to encourage millions of low income citizens to purchase their first computer.

The proposed laptops will run on the linux operating system, and will be rugged, wireless enabled, and have full color screens. MIT are hoping to power the notebooks using an alternative power source such as solar or wind up. Current specs are: 500MHz processor, and 1GB hard drive.

Negroponte would like to mount a serious attempt to get the notebooks ready for shipment by the end of 2006 or early 2007. However, he does anticipate difficulty in supplying these mobile computers in such massive quantity.

".....The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything.....The scale is daunting, but I find myself amazed at what some companies are proposing to us......"

Luckily some big names have signed up to help MIT Media Lab, including Google,and Advanced Micro Devices. With Negroponte hoping to equip 200 million of the world's poorest children with laptops in the next few years, he'll need all the help he can get.

September 2005 update! - Laptops will be encased in rubber for extra protection from bumps and scratches, and have 4 USB ports. A prototype laptop may be seen as early as November at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia. Children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa will be among the first to get the cheap laptops. In 2007 Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney aims to purchase many of Negronte's notebooks for school pupils in the state.

November 2005 update! - MIT's Nicholas Negroponte has shown a working prototype of the $100 laptop to U.N Secretary General Kofi Annan, at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.

January 2006 update! - The One Laptop Per Child project has just won a key supporter. Indeed, the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) have just announced that they will back the OLPC program. This news was announced at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. More details to follow.

April 2006 update! - The hand cranked power source is now out of the window, a pedal powered option has been suggested. Also the notebooks won't be offered for $100 as first though, instead a figure of $135 is more realistic. Two new color options have been created as alternatives to Design Continuum's lime green prototypes. The "Fuse Project" has created designs in blue and yellow.
 
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Now if they would just have a slightly better model for $200. i.e. give it 4-8 GBs of memory, and bigger better screen, and a battery. I've already seen ok new laptops for $400-$500. One thing I've heard about the $100 ones is that they would cost $300 here so that it would pay for 2 others to go to 3rd world countries. If they tried to make me pay $300 for that I would just spend a couple hundred more and get a real laptop:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2301439&Sku=A180-1240
 
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exhawg said:
Now if they would just have a slightly better model for $200. i.e. give it 4-8 GBs of memory, and bigger better screen, and a battery. I've already seen ok new laptops for $400-$500. One thing I've heard about the $100 ones is that they would cost $300 here so that it would pay for 2 others to go to 3rd world countries. If they tried to make me pay $300 for that I would just spend a couple hundred more and get a real laptop:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2301439&Sku=A180-1240
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The whole way of use for those $100 laptops is completely different than
your typical off the shelf laptop! They operate as a "node". With laptops linked together! You would NOT like that!
:biggrin:
 
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Hodge said:
The only thing he's afraid of is loosing all that $$$ from everyone who is going to get a $100 laptop with a free distribution of linux on it. He probably can't stand the thought of somebody releasing that many computers without any intention of Window$ going on them.
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BINGO.

There are 300M consumer desktop/laptop computers in the world running Windows. If the project could actually come to fruition, and 200M children were armed with Linux laptops, Microsoft's market dominance would drop from 90% to less than 50% in just two years.

If you expand the project to compensate every child on earth, you've suddenly got 2B Linux laptops. If you continue the project at the pace of the global birthrate -- 370,000 children born every day -- that's 2.6M linux laptops per week, or a 135M per year.
 
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Dryden said:
BINGO.

There are 300M consumer desktop/laptop computers in the world running Windows. If the project could actually come to fruition, and 200M children were armed with Linux laptops, Microsoft's market dominance would drop from 90% to less than 50% in just two years.

If you expand the project to compensate every child on earth, you've suddenly got 2B Linux laptops. If you continue the project at the pace of the global birthrate -- 370,000 children born every day -- that's 2.6M linux laptops per week, or a 135M per year.
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Thank you X-Ray Randy.... :tongue2:
 
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our school came very close to adopting a budget that would provide every student in the district a laptop... the budget was fine to buy the original hardware and software but monsterously lacking in repair and replacement costs... they seem to forget these are kids...

from a major laptop program I headed up for J&J (9000 laptops), the repair bills were mind boggling... and these were supposedly adults !!!
 
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The school district here already did it. After my kids were out of grade school, but every kid in the district (grades 3 thru 8, I think) has a laptop.

It was a pilot program. The woman that pushed it though was since hired by Apple.
 
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