One Laptop Per Child News on Laptops

OLPC Unveiling of the Next Generation XO Laptop

Posted on May 07, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Laptops: XO-2

If you are in Boston on May 20th, may I strongly suggest you crash the invite-only "State of the State" event at One Laptop Per Child headquarters at 1 Cambridge Circle. Starting at 10 am the event sounds like its going to be a watershed moment in OLPC history. Just listen to the breathless press invite:

Selected invitees will have the opportunity to hear Nicholas Negroponte give a “State of the State” address on the One Laptop per Child project to date and the evolution of the XO laptop. In addition, attendees will be privy to a discussion on the product roadmap for the XO along with the exclusive unveiling of the next generation of the XO.

Nicholas and newly named OLPC President Chuck Kane will also be joined in the discussion by OLPC team members and government officials who have been on the ground in developing countries as thousands of XO laptops have been deployed and implemented into school systems. They will provide updates from countries including Peru , Uruguay and Haiti .

Now I don't know about you, but there is one phrase in all that which makes my pulse quicken: "the exclusive unveiling of the next generation of the XO." Now what could that next generation be?

A production level Windows XO?
Maybe a Diamondville XO laptop?
Or go crazy an show Sugar on the Classmate!

No matter what Nicholas Negroponte unveils, it will be the press event of the week for OLPC, and I'm quite sad I didn’t get an invite and will not be crashing the party.

Not that I will feel left out. I'm sure you have your own ideas on what Nicholas should be doing - just read the suggestions of what others would do if they could be Negroponte for a day. Better yet, give me your thoughts on what the "next generation XO" could be...

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The Apple Ultrathin: Who's Driving the Innovation Now?

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Alexandre Van de Sande in Sales Talk: Competition, Laptops: XO-2

The first manufactured computer to ship without a floppy drive was the original candy colored iMac, back 1998, which relied only on internet, a CD-ROM and a port called the Universal Serial Bus ports.

Ten years ago, a cd burner was something expensive, few people had heard of USB connections and the keychain flash drive wasn't coming to market for another two years. This move was considered highly ahead of it's time for apple and for some this helped launch the USB as a standard and displace the 3.5" disks onto oblivion.

Fast forward to 2008 and Apple announced the wireless Macbook Air, a ultralight low power laptop with no cd or dvd drive, no hard disk, but highly connected portable computer. In a few years this will probably be the industry standard, but this time around it's not Cupertino who's setting it.

Granted, one cannot compare the $199 XO to a $1,799 Macbook anymore than one can compare the recently announced $2,500 Nano Car by India's Tata motor to a $50,000 Porsche, unless on technological grounds. And that is what I'm going to do.

Apple Macbook Air vs. OLPC XO-1

By using cutting edge technology, the Negroponte's team was able to come out not with a dumbed down version of a commercial laptop but a innovative product that was also cheap. The XO was the first portable rely solely on solid state drive and following it's steps came the classmate, the Eee pc and now the Macbook Air.

The XO stills sets some standards that are sure to be followed by the big players. The screen technology for example is certainly – as Lou Jepsen has said – to become a trend. The Apple iPhone is probably the only other product that can be compared in terms of screen resolution and I would not be surprised if their laptops upgraded to 144 dpi displays soon.

And I could bet that mesh networking is the next XO technology to come to a general consumer product. Of course this is not to say that other industries are copying the XO innovations but this is rather a consequence of bigger trends (like falling flash drive prices) that OLPC happened to catch first.

What this does means is that probably all this incredible "clock-stopping hot" technology the little green laptop has today will probably be quite common place by the end of 2008. And by then, what will happen to the One Laptop?

Price vs. Power Future

By there we can expect Apple, Eee, Dell and every other computer manufacturer to have updated their computer models. Prices may go down a bit, but muscles will surely go way up. What can we expect from OLPC?

I hope XO2 to continue forcing the biggest innovation on the computer industry so far: that muscles might go up a bit, but price – oh price – will continue to drop radically.

Let all the computer manufacturers continue their Arms Race. Let OLPC step outside to another completely different kind of marathon.

The one for the children.

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Intel Can't Take the (Low) Heat & Power of OLPC XO

Posted on January 04, 2008 by Charbax in Sales Talk: Intel, Laptops: XO-2

Two days before Intel CEO Paul Otellini would unveil the Classmate 2 or the Intel-powered XO at the CES, Intel announced that they are quitting the OLPC board.

Intel claims that they are quitting because of Nicholas Negroponte wanting them to stop the promotion of the Classmate/Eee to education in third world countries, but I think that the real reason is that Intel does not have a good enough processor for the OLPC project to use as an alternative to the AMD Geode LX-700.

Intel has not been able to develop a processor to match the price, power consumption and performance requirements of the OLPC project. Paul Otellini could have looked like a fool at the CES if he had to unveil an Intel powered XO that was performing worse in terms of price and power consumption compared to the AMD powered one.

Intel executives probably have seen the OLPC project more as a threat than as an opportunity to their core business from day one. Intel probably wants to do whatever they can to stop the development of cheap laptop alternatives using cheaper fanless AMD processors and even ARM based processors in the future (XO-2, XO-3…), which is a direct threat to Intel's market-dominating X86 standard.

I think that Intel did not achieve or want to achieve any of these technological and pricing advancements in an Intel-powered XO and thus in fear of being ridiculed at CES with a more expensive Intel-powered XO with shorter battery life, Intel, as a last resort, decided to quit OLPC and blame it on Nicholas Negroponte.

Intel might think it is a superior technology provider and that it can simply continue to market its Intel powered education laptop against the OLPC project. Intel probably feels too uncomfortable with the prospect of supporting the development of cheap low powered laptops by being a member of the OLPC board. I think that Intel sees those cheap XO laptops as potentially becoming huge devastating disruptors to the established expensive laptop business in the developed nations.

A commercial XO could replace all laptops in the business productivity, educational, personal and entertainment sectors of the PC and laptop business, which is the reason Mary-Lou Jepsen, OLPC's previous CTO, is working on her new business to commercialise XO technology in the coming weeks and months.

Soon: commercial XO production?

When will we hear of the first commercial cheap laptop projects using many or most of the OLPC XO open-source technologies? Quanta's ex-CEO talked about Quanta producing a commercial version of the XO many months ago.

I think that any company with an interest in introducing low margin, large volume, low cost, low power laptops, could most probably come in, approach Mary-Lou Jepsen and the OLPC for access to using the open-source hardware and software of the project for commercial projects.

And this could lead any of WalMart, Dell, Medion-Aldi, Google, AMD, Amazon and IBM to introduce commercial $200 laptops in the near future, all running optimized and free versions of Linux.

Would the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation not be criticised for working against the work of the Red Cross to bringing vaccinations and food to starving and sick populations? Why would anyone want to compete with a non-profit open-source project like OLPC? I have been asking those questions to Intel ever since I filmed an Intel representative at the WCIT in May of 2006 when they first introduced the Classmate PC.

If anyone has a better technology to decrease the price, improve the battery life, improve the e-book screen readability, improve the flash/divx video playback performance or improve the connectivity with WiMax, cellular, satellite or other technologies, then logically that entity currently simply can contribute that new technology into the open-source development for the XO-2 by simply contacting OLPC, posting on their Wiki, making press announcements and talking about their newer, better technologies to bloggers and to the media.

I think that Intel doesn't want to share it's R&D, distribution network, design ideas and proprietary technologies with a non-profit like OLPC. I think that Intel hates the open-source hardware/software/distribution revolution.

I've also published this on my blog.

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Intel Leaves OLPC Board Over Classmate Sales

Posted on January 03, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Intel, Laptops: XO-2

Fresh from the Wall Street Journal, One Laptop Per Child and Intel have just hit divorce court:

Intel says it no longer will support One Laptop Per Child, and has resigned from the board over the nonprofit's demand that it stop selling its Classmate laptop and other laptops in the developing world. Intel says it has canceled plans for an Intel-based OLPC laptop.

Now am I the only one who saw that coming since July?

Did OLPC really think it was going to stop Intel for selling Classmate PC's when it's AMD-powered device was making inroads into the developing world? And to think it would do so for anyone, for or non-profit, goes against every stock option Intel ever granted.

And did OLPC think it was going to convince Intel to stop "other laptops" (the Asus Eee PC?) from appearing? That goes against the hyper-competitive nature of the entire Silicon Valley, and even OLPC's original mission statement.

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A 2008 Press Release Prediction: Diamondville XO Laptop

Posted on December 03, 2007 by Charbax in Sales Talk: Intel, Software: Windows, Laptops: XO-2

This is the press release that we are soon going to read in 2008:

Intel abandons the Classmate PC to focus on Diamondville in the Intel-powered XO-2 laptop.

Intel and everyone else in OLPC will work also on future XO laptops that may also include laptops better suited for older children and adults.

Every age-group in developing countries need the low power consumption, the sunlight readable screen, the DCON-CPU-Screen mechanism to be able to read ebooks for tens of hours on a battery, wireless mesh to make WiFi hotspots much more usable and to achieve much better productivity in all age-groups.

Collaboration software over WiFi Mesh should also be made for company-level applications, for optimizing adults productivity. Intel and OLPC can maximize R&D on that. Asus will also crank an XO screen onto the Eee, include in it a Diamondville and within 3-6 months there will be an Asus-made XO laptop.

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Intel's Designs for One Laptop Per Child's XO-2 Computer

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Intel, Commentary: Press, Laptops: XO-2

I'm sure everyone has seen Sumner Lemon's article about one Intel Inside a laptop per child. In reading his comments, I was intrigued by Walter Bender's take-all-comers comment of:

"Intel, like a lot of other people, is more than welcome to try to design great silicon for this project and this mission, and we've been working with them to help them do exactly that."

Such bravado reminds me of the original OLPC mission, since changed, that said they were open to others producing a low-cost laptop too.

But this time it may be different. Joel Hruska reports that One Laptop Per Child should be ready to change chipsets soon

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One Intel Inside Laptop Per Child

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Intel, Hardware: School Servers, Laptops: XO-2

No matter how you feel about Teemu Leinonen's suggestion that One Laptop Per Child should use Participatory Design in developing a XO-2, it looks like Intel Corporation is already pre-participating in the next generation of OLPC products. Just read their OLPC + Intel announcement closely:

Q: How will OLPC work with Intel technology?

A: Initially, OLPC is planning to add Intel Xeon processor based servers to their product offerings, taking advantage of world class performance, reliability and energy efficiency. In addition, Intel is developing a system board design for OLPC consideration in their next generation XO device.

We are also beginning to explore more wide ranging technology and product collaboration that will bring exciting new technology innovations to children around the world.

Reading that, I say bye-bye to the current XSX school server motherboard, a fanless Mini-ITX from VIA Technologies. I also see the next generation XO-2 dropping the XO-1's AMD Geode LX-700 processor for Intel’s 2008 Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform.

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Participation Design of OLPC XO-2: With And For People

Posted on August 08, 2007 by Guest Writer in Countries: Nigeria, Laptops: XO-2

Is Real Video player educational?

The greatest downsides of the OLPC project has been said to be the total lack of piloting with research on educational impact, as well as lack of curriculum integration and implementation plan. I am Teemu Leinonen and I think these two challenges are obviously interlinked.

The reason for this can be that One Laptop Per Child does not value very high the principles of human-centered design, neither educational planning. Without these pieces in place the claim of OLPC being educational project rather than a laptop project is not very convincing.

It's not a secret that OLPC is a project of technologists, more precisely engineers. It's also known that educators design education, (good) designers design solutions and engineers design technology. We may ask what OLPC laptop is? Is it education solution or technology?

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One Laptop Per Child News

Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.