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Our Blogs The BeerFiles OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows
Our Blogs The BeerFiles OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows | OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Friday, 09 May 2008 | |
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Page 4 of 4 Finally, now that large commercial computer makers have
cottoned on to the demand for ultra low cost entry level laptops and
are bringing ever cheaper and more sophisticated products to market,
can OLPC successfully compete with the likes of Asus, Intel, HP and
others?"They're totally different devices. The Eee PC is a smaller version of the more traditional laptop computer. The OLPC (XO) is a full spectrum project that goes through the device lifecycle all through the education aspect of the project and is a different perspective of providing a collaborative learning environment on a laptop," Waugh says. "An Eee PC is the kind of thing that high school students would absolutely go nuts for and will be perfect to throw in your bag to go to school with. But it wouldn't last a second with a primary school kid bashing it over their chair. The OLPC is very much made for the dangerous environment that exists in primary school. Also the OLPC hardware does things that Eee PC just doesn't do such as mesh networking, having a battery that lasts for long hours and you can put a solar panel on your roof and charge 15 batteries in one hit in your class room - you don't need power sockets. "OLPC is 100% designed for the educational requirement for children in primary school and meant to be deployed en masse rather than as a consumer device. One other important perspective on that is we want to make it clear that an adult buying an OLPC shouldn't expect that they're buying a laptop like an Eee PC. You can certainly run Linux on it and turn it into a conventional laptop PC but that's not what it was designed for. "For a five year old, the collaborative learning communication environment and the really expressive and intuitive user interface changes the game on what they're able to do in classroom. They can all share a painting on the same canvas on their laptop or go and sit under a tree, download a book and read it in beautiful back and white high resolution in bright sunlight. An added bonus is that the OLPC has also inspired the small laptop market and so it is improving the lives of adults as well."
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