Video: Hands-on with OLPC
by Randall Bennett 
posted Jan 10th 2007 at 12:40PM
Nick Negroponte's OLPC made an appearance at CES, in partner Marvell's booth. Marvell supplies the 802.11 b/g chipset, as well as a chipset made exclusively for mesh networking. Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for Marvell) we all know why everyone showed up, and it definitely wasn't for ICs. Take a look up top, or download at the bottom.
[MP4] Download the video
[MP4] Download the video
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DogzOfWar @ Mar 24th 2007 8:25AM
"One big advantage is if you power down your OLPC, the mesh network can still continuously running. That's a big advantage for those kids in those countries."
What? Really? I think i'm missing some critical part of how this mesh network runs.
theattack @ Jan 10th 2007 1:12PM
wow. what a product. For 150 i would buy one. This is what happens when you have MIT labs produce a product to help the worlds childeren instead of some goverment doing it. Lets have Nik Neg work on welfare, medicaid, and poverty next and we should be in great shape.
wayan @ Jan 10th 2007 1:25PM
What's up with the music over the commentary? I wanted to hear what y'all said when you were playing with the OLPC. Maybe the sound of your drool hitting the keyboard? Wait till you find out OLPC XO's go on retail sale in 2008!
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/price/olpc_xo_to_go_retail.html
retsel @ Jan 10th 2007 2:16PM
i say give them all iphones
Caleb @ Jan 10th 2007 2:21PM
So, uhh, what, uhh, you can, uhh, se umm, is that, umm, there are umm, cool umm, music, uhh in the uhh background, umm, and 3rd World Countries, so uhh, they are umm, not uhh devloping nations? uhh lol? umm. Yes uhh
MaX PL and the 360 r4pe Tr4iN @ Jan 10th 2007 2:25PM
haha, yeh they should have had someone else give them the run down on the OLPC.
as for the OLPC itself, its an amazing product. i'll be ordering one myself to support the children.
Rex @ Jan 10th 2007 2:34PM
Marvell supplies the 802.11 chipset for the Iphone. Time to buy some stocks.
coollettuce @ Jan 10th 2007 3:06PM
imagine how bad the Nigerian email scam will become when we give all those kids laptops. But hey, bad comes with good. keep up the great work olpc!
peptidefarmer @ Jan 10th 2007 3:37PM
Nice circa 1980s public television interstitial programming music. Took me back to simpler times.
And that is an awesome machine. I want one.
Chris @ Jan 10th 2007 4:56PM
Can we have correct Content-Type headers for these mp4 downloads? Returning text/plain means that clicking the download link in NetNewsWire causes Safari to try to display the contents of the file as text, which is obviously not what should happen.
Chris @ Jan 10th 2007 4:58PM
... in fact the more staightforward scenario of just clicking the link in Safari causes the same problem.
Maff @ Jan 11th 2007 9:02AM
why is the music at the start of ALL engadget videos like 90dB, argagag
Randall Bennett @ Jan 10th 2007 8:40PM
It's actually a text editor....
Ben @ Jan 10th 2007 9:14PM
I would buy one for £100. Whats really cool I think though is if they go to retail they might bring out a second and third version. As far as I can see its the perfect student PC.
Allows you to do all your work. Doesn't get virus' to mess it all up. Much harder to get distracted by playing games and watching TV.
This thing is great!
Information Central @ Jan 11th 2007 11:47PM
Umm, anyone notice the trackpad? The thing is as wide as the keyboard, meaning that the heel of at least one hand is going to be on it all the time. That's not going to work.
Judith K. Baker @ Feb 6th 2007 12:36PM
I am working with rural African educators who are trying to make sense of all this - so please help me. If you had a tiny budget, schools with no electricity, but you really need internet to stand in for the books you don't have, and your teachers need video conferences to upgrade their professional skills, what would YOU buy? Would you get a very cheap word processor/[WHICH one] computer and then have people travel to a place with a computer and internet that you buy - or a fairly cheap all purpose computer [which one] or put up with any incompatibilites and go crank computer? YOUR help is really needed. What do you suggest?