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Quanta begins OLPC XO production ramp-up
Quanta Computer has finally received the green light to ramp up production of Negroponte's OLPC XO. The not-quite $100, open-source laptop should start shipping in quantity by October at a current cost of $176-per with the option of solar, foot-pump, and pull-string chargers presumably at additional cost. For those keeping track, that's about 4-months later than NickNeg's original estimate. Of course, as Nick likes to remind everyone, it's not about the laptop at all, it's about education. Former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, effusively described it as "an expression of global solidarity." Good, 'cause even humanitarian efforts will need a logo in Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
OLPC production line nearly ready after getting 3 million orders?
No, it won't be July, but it's looking like you won't have to wait until Q4 either to hear the production line at Quanta begin to crank out OLPC XOs en masse. According to the China Post, Quanta "will start production of low-cost machines for the One Laptop per Child project in September after a nine-month delay," and interestingly, it even cites the recent hardware alterations as a culprit for the latest hangup. Michail Bletsas, a network design executive for the project, states that the firm will churn out "40,000 XOs a month from September 22nd," and could increase that figure to 400,000 units a month by the end of this year. Bletsas was also quoted as saying that "three million would be made in the first round of production," insinuating that quite a few orders have either been booked or are looking fairly secure. Regardless, we're sure kiddos around the world are hoping that this all pans out, because judging by the looks on the faces of kids in Uruguay, it's pretty much the best thing to ever hit the classroom.[Via OLPCNews]
Uruguay youngsters receive batch of OLPC XOs
Yeah, we've caught glimpses of the OLPC in action, but we've yet to see a group of school children get so hyped about receiving an educational tool like the 160 youngsters in Villa Cardal recently did. The relatively small Uruguayan town was thrown into a mild frenzy as a batch of shiny green and white OLPC XOs showed up to give the impressionable kiddos a taste of how learning should really be done. As promised, every child was gifted with their very own machine, and while we're not sure when the curriculum will be updated to account for them, we're giving the kids a slight edge on homework assignments for the time being. Needless to say, the experience is best described by photographs of the mayhem, so be sure to click on through for a few more select snaps, and hit the read link for the entire collection.[Via Digg]
OLPC rundown: XO gets naked, project detailed
We still haven't seen anything beyond BTest-2 of OLPC's impending XO laptop, but Jürgen Rink over at heise mobil has an in-depth rundown of the project, the laptop and the competition. There's much to be said, eight pages of it, in fact, but Jürgen provides some interesting insights into what sets the XO's tech apart from current laptops and other entrants in the educational laptop space. He also makes it quite clear that the XO has a ways to go, with power consumption -- which Nicholas Negroponte is targeting at 2 watts -- currently ranging from 6.5 to 9.1 watts, and the battery life at 2.5 to 3.5 hours falls far short of the projected 10 hours. Also MIA is the back light sensor, and that much talked about pull-string power generator hasn't even hit prototype stages yet. There are concerns that the convertible display hinge will prove to fragile under heavy use, and software holes like security and missing apps will need to be fixed before the laptop is ready for prime time. That said, the laptop provides some pretty interesting advancements in the realm of hardware and software, with notables like the reflective display, mesh networking, stylus-friendly trackpads and the "kids teach themselves" concept differentiating the XO from edu-PC wannabes. The project still hasn't reached its moment of truth, when verbally-committed governments have to start ponying up cash, but the first order of business is wrapping development on the XO, and we look forward to peeping the final product.
Forget the OLPC XO: India working on $10 laptop
While Nick Negroponte and the crew over at OLPC struggle to offer the XO for its original target of $100 (it now costs around $175, before factoring in support costs), India's Ministry of Human Resource Development is planning to completely leapfrog three-digit price tags with a machine that is already spec'ed at $47 and may cost only ten bucks when manufactured in bulk. With two potential designs having already been submitted by a researcher and engineering student (neither of which is pictured above) and a critical meeting scheduled for later this month, the "TDL" project seems to be well underway, and officials hope to have a product out the door within two years. India's plans for uber-cheap hardware come almost a year after the country rejected the XO as "pedagogically suspect," and several months after yet another competitor in this space -- Intel's Classmate -- was loosed on Brazil. And so the race to charge absolutely nothing for computers continues unabated, foretelling a day in the not-too-distant future when we'll be churning through PCs like daily-wear contacts. [Via Slashdot]
Nobody at OLPC working on Windows: sorry kids
Yes, we know you impoverished children of the world would love nothing more than the opportunity to get some hands-on experience with Windows, providing you with a valuable skillset for a Windows-based world, but the OLPC project sure isn't going to help you in that quest. "We are a free and open-source shop." Says OLPC's Walter Bender, president of Software and Content, rebutting some of the conjecture surrounding Nick Neg's Windows-related statement last week. "We have no one from OLPC working with Microsoft on developing a Windows platform for the XO. MS doesn't get any special treatment from OLPC." It has been confirmed that Microsoft is developing for the XO, but OLPC hasn't contacted Microsoft about including the $3 software bundle with its computers, and claims no governments have approached it about loading Windows on the computers. [Via Slashdot]
Negroponte suggests the OLPC can support Windows, may hit US schools
Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about the OLPC, Negroponte, and the Sugar interface, in comes the man himself using the "W" word in an open-sourced conversation. Curiously enough, Nik Neg has not only stated that the present is "perhaps the most critical stage of the OLPC's life," but he also blurted out a quasi-firm $176 pricetag that would be attached to them. Additionally, he went so far as to admit that "XO's developers have been working with Microsoft so a version of Windows can run on the machines," and while no direct linkages were drawn to the recent $3 software package that the firm had announced, the writing is somewhat on the wall. Furthermore, a whopping 19 state governors have reportedly shown interest in grabbing a few of the inexpensive machines for their own schoolkids, and while the creator initially stated that the XOs were "designed for a totally different situation," he was also quoted as saying that business in the US "couldn't be ignored." C'mon guys and gals, how about a little less conversation and a little more action?Read - Hints of Windows on OLPCRead - US schools could adopt OLPC
OLPC XO shipments delayed until Q4?
You'll have to take this with the usual hefty grain of salt, but according to China's Commercial Times, OLPC manufacturer Quanta has been forced to push back its target ship date for the XO from July to sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. Leading to this speculation is the fact that Quanta has apparently yet to release its orders for various parts and components set for inclusion in the laptop, which would seem to indicate that a July ship date would be tough to meet. It would also, of course, seem to make the promised ten million laptops before year's end a bit unlikely.[Thanks, Eric]
Brazil's first Intel Classmate PC given to o presidente
The odd public relations battle among the various manufacturers of super-low-cost laptops is heating up once again, with Intel ceremoniously delivering Brazil's first Classmate PC to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (presumably it will not be his primary machine). The low-power Classmate -- competing with OLPC's XO and Encore's Mobilis for a bulk contract and presumably lucrative support deals -- was part of an initial lot of 30 machines for government eggheads to play with, and will be followed by a donation of 800 units sometime next month. Unlike the $150 XO, the Classmate is a multi-hundred dollar machine with some fairly decent specs -- for its class, at least -- as it features a Celeron M CPU, 256MB of DDR2 RAM, and 1GB of NAND flash, among other "luxuries." With this seemingly heated competition to provide cheap notebooks to the children of Brazil, it's amusing to think that along with teaching them about coding, writing, and web surfing, these little gadgets will also bring them another proud tradition of developed countries: the OS war.
OLPC BTest-2 XO beta machine sequel arrives
Good things happened with that last round of test XO test machines, and now OLPC has shipped out round two, with an improved screen (now with real-live diffuser action), and at last the appearance of a touch pad. The main thrust of BTest-2 is mesh networking and suspend / resume functionality, the industrial design is relatively unchanged, since there wasn't enough time to implement changes found in BTest-1. The third BTest of this trilogy will be supposedly much more rugged -- for instance, Jean Piché already noticed some trackpad woes: "Because of blotches and air bubbles, I almost tried to peel off what seemed like a protective strip of paper on the trackpad. It's a mylar sheet not to be removed!" Thanks for the heads up, Jean. Now what nerdy prof do we need to mug to get a bit of BTest-2 up in the HQ?[Via OLPC News, photo courtesy of Jacob Kaplan-Moss]
OLPC project has a remote "kill switch" for resold laptops
Perhaps it says something about a project if there's a likelihood the handouts will be resold for something actually useful, like food or shelter, but have no fear: Nick Neg and his OLPC crew even have a solution to that potential "problem" facing future owners of the XO. According to the recent Reuters report on the project, the laptops can be remotely shut down to help prevent the selling the devices on the black market, though details of exactly how this works aren't forthcoming. We suppose there's always the danger the laptops could be stolen, and this could prove a bit of a deterrent to that, but there's always going to be some value to the actual components of the laptop even if the locking code proves impenetrable -- which seems unlikely. "For people earning one dollar a day the temptation to sell it for $300 will be very strong," says Wayan Vota of OLPC News. Heck, who couldn't use a quick $300?[Via Techdirt]
Quanta confirms one million OLPC XO orders
According to InfoWorld (via Yahoo News), contract manufacturer Quanta Computer has confirmed that they've received orders for one million of the long-awaited OLPC XO laptops anticipated by children and geeks alike, with orders expected to further increase throughout the rest of the year. If that goes as planned, Quanta says it could ship as many as ten million of the laptops before year's end, which would go a long way towards getting the little green laptop down to its intended $100 price point, possibly even ahead of the 2008 target date for a price drop. Quanta also revealed that NickNeg is apparently not the only one obsessed with the project, with company president Michael Wang saying "this is our chairman's pet project, it's his life." Not that there's anything wrong with being obsessed with a gadget, of course.
OLPC project readies first large-scale XO test
The OLPC project has shipped a few test units here or there, but it's finally ramping things up in the lead-up to July, when they'll start producing five million of the lime-green things. This shipment, however, is quite a bit more modest than that: 2,500 laptops are heading to Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Rwanda, Pakistan, Thailand and possibly Ethiopia and the West Bank. Soon after that will come Indonesia and a few other countries. Strangely, this Reuters report still seems to imply that the pull-string "salad spinner" generator is new on the scene, or perhaps not even ready yet, which doesn't bode well for the project that is no doubt in need of finalizing designs. But no matter, all we needed to know was that these things were finally getting into the hands of OLPC clients around the world that are the ones that will actually be committing these absurd amounts of dollars to their children's education, who cares if they work![Thanks, Sparky]
Classmate PC swallows OLPC: won't somebody please think of the children?!
It's just Intel's reference design for the UMPC V2 and Intel Classmate PC. Still, it's good to know that it can play nice with the little OLPC XO. Especially when their parents can't.
Pepper folks shake a little software onto the OLPC
The OLPC kids seem pretty set on their "Sugar" GUI, with its complete disregard for traditional UI forms in search of a new, kid-friendly OS experience. However, there's a new game in town, in the form of Pepper Computer, which has ported its Pepper Pad OS over to those brightly colored XO machines. The port makes plenty of sense, since Pepper's own computers run on similar AMD Geode procs, and both OSes are similarly based on Linux. Pepper Pad was also initially built with younger users in mind, and given the fact that Pepper's OS is quite a bit more mature than OLPC's current offering, it's hard not get attached to the idea. Of course, the absence of a touch screen on the XO might put a bit of a damper on things, but it seems the trackpad can take over just fine in its absence. It doesn't seem like this new development will have much effect on the OLPC project as it relates to those millions of laptops NickNeg is hoping to ship to kiddies in developing countries, but it's nice to know we'll have such an OS option when we snag our own XO off eBay.
Rwanda joins the fray, getting "hundreds of thousands" of OLPC XOs
Here's an idea: just release these OLPC XOs to every country in the world and be done with it. Sadly, that isn't likely to happen, but at least Rwanda is joining the growing list of countries ready to get their palms on the green machines. According to OLPC, Rwanda will be receiving "initial test units and technical support at no cost within a few days." After Quanta ramps up production in July, the nation expects to receive "hundreds of thousands" of the wee laptops late this summer at an "initial cost" of $150 apiece, with future units expected to cost a bit less. Rwanda's government, of course, is footing the entire bill, and hopes to actually provide a computer to "all primary school children within five years." So for any school-aged Rwandans out there itching to crank up Doom or surf the net on Opera while disregarding those grammar and arithmetic lessons, your countdown can officially begin.
Negroponte's OLPC aims for production launch in July
With countries lining up their orders and important prototyping milestones falling by the wayside, it's high time for an OLPC launch schedule, eh NickNeg? Indeed. According to the AP, the XO machines will be handed to kids for testing in February with Quanta Computer ramping up to ship several million production units by "July or so." When faced with skepticism over the capabilities of the little XO, NickNeg retorts, "I have to laugh when people refer to XO as a weak or crippled machine and how kids should get a 'real' one. Trust me, I will give up my real one very soon and use only XO." Ok Nick, we'll hold you to that.
OLPC XO caught playing Super Mario Bros. 3
We've always considered computers to be entertainment machines first, means to an end second, and tools for learning a distant third, so it's no surprise to see thrill-seekers everywhere squeezing every last drop of excitement from the recently-shipped OLPC XOs. While we've already witnessed someone getting their fix of 1992 by hitting up a few rounds of Doom, the latest case of "installing noneducational software on laptops geared for learning" involves none other than Super Mario himself, as a clever individual has not only got Super Mario Bros. 3 up and running on the XO, but captured a video of the feat as well. So go on and click through to sneak a peek yourself, you know you can't resist.
OLPC: video conferencing for the children
Sure, the OLPC XO has had its built-in VGA webcam for a little while now, but with a mere 400Mhz processor, it took a bit of working to get the laptop up and running in a live video chat. However, those open source hax0rs aren't easily dissuaded when it comes to broadcasting their scurvy mugs across the internets, and have finally managed the first OLPC-to-OLPC transatlantic chat, with "extremely smooth" 15fps video and simultaneous audio. While the bad news here is that if you fire this thing up right now, you'll probably be looking at a dork on the other end, the eventual hope is that kids will be able to chat via the mesh network by just simply clicking on a buddy icon in the mesh view.
Opera hits the OLPC XO
It looks like those not satisfied with the OLPC XO laptop's pre-loaded browser will have another, less open source option at their disposal whenever they manage to get their hands on one of the little green machines, with the Opera team reporting that their browser "runs beautifully" on it. Getting it running in the first place, however, took a slight bit of effort, requiring them to enter the somewhat hidden shell mode and install the browser from the command prompt. Once that business was taken care of, they went into full hyperbole mode, with Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie saying that seeing Opera run on the OLPC for the first time was a "revelation" and that "no browser has ever been more beautiful" -- due in no small part to the screen's 200 dpi resolution. Not so revelatory, however, is the browser's ability to handle extensive Javascript, which apparently caused the laptop to freeze on occasion, though they say they're working on that, as well as an OLPC skin so it won't look too out of place next to the other apps.[Via Slashdot]
