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Fuzzy Logic OLPC ‘$100’ laptop costs USD $175 + $1
Fuzzy Logic OLPC ‘$100’ laptop costs USD $175 + $1 | OLPC ‘$100’ laptop costs USD $175 + $1 |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Saturday, 28 April 2007 | |
  
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If you run the education department of a third world country, and you’re intrigued by the prospect of a ruggedized, wireless, relatively modern laptop computer for the underprivileged students of your country, the cost of the $100 laptop has gone up – to $176, putting it not too far from the cost of its biggest competitor, the Intel Classmate PC. Apparently the actual cost is $175, but Nicholas Negroponte’s OLPC organization is adding an additional dollar to the cost to fund distribution. $3 in profits are made by Quanta, Inc, the Taiwanese manufacturer who is making the ‘XO’ OLPC computer, and orders totaling millions are due from October onwards, at least so Negroponte says. Negroponte also expects the manufacturing cost of the laptop to drop by 25% after the first year of production, although whether that will actually happen or not is naturally yet to be seen. While the initial batch of OLPC laptops that came out in February for select ‘test’ students and developers in different places around the world came with a customized version of Linux, the news that Negroponte has been working with Microsoft for a version of Windows to run on the ‘XO’ OLPC has been reported by the Associated Press as being true, with the additional cost of a ‘starter’ version of Windows XP and some additional ‘productivity software’ set to cost US $3. Whether that $3 is part of the $176 cost is unclear, it might well be an additional cost, over and above the free version of Linux that would otherwise come with each XO. At least with Windows, even if in slightly crippled ‘starter Windows XP’ form, the XO will be running an interface that most of the world’s consumers are well used to using. The free version of Linux, which has had some development assistance through Red Hat, seems to be a much more basic affair, using stick figures and other icons to represent other users and tasks that can be performed, instead of the more natural desktop metaphor most of us are already familiar with using. One of the OLPC’s big challenges is Intel’s Classmate PC, which runs Linux or Windows. Shown off at the recent Beijing Intel Developer Forum (IDF), the Classmate was once touted to cost US $400, but this cost has come down to anywhere from US $199 to $250, putting it much more into the same kind of price range as the OLPC. More details and specifications on the latest version of Intel’s Classmate PC can be seen at the Bit-Tech website and at Intel's own Classmate PC website. So far, the OLPC project has generated a lot of interest worldwide, not only from third world countries, but even from first world countries such as the US and Australia, although in those cases for use by underprivileged children in first world countries, not the general public. It’s easy to criticize these kinds of projects as some will have done following the latest news, but we’re happy to applaud anything that helps reduce the cost of technology and put computers into the hands of more people, and hope that both the OLPC and the Intel Classmate project succeed in bringing the richness of the Internet and the educational and ebook opportunities – and much, much more – that a computer brings to millions, if not billions more people across the globe. We also sympathize that building a $100 laptop is a massive challenge that hasn’t quite yet been met, whether by the OLPC or by Intel. Nevertheless, it is still the intended price target, and they may reach it yet in the years to come. {moscomment} |
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