BBC NEWS | Technology | '$100 laptop' begins production

'$100 laptop' begins production
Mass production of the so-called $100 laptop has begun, five years after the concept was first proposed.
Computer manufacturer Quanta has started building the low-cost laptops at a factory in Changshu, China.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), the group behind the project, said that children in developing countries would begin receiving machines this month

Last month, OLPC received its first official order for 100,000 machines from the government of Uruguay.

"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC.

The organisation had reached the critical stage despite "all the naysayers," he said.

Price hike

Since Professor Negroponte first put forward the idea of distributing low-cost laptop to children in developing countries in 2002, the plan has been both praised and mocked.


Intel chairman Craig Barret described the XO laptop, as the machine is known, as a "$100 gadget" whilst Microsoft founder Bill Gates questioned its lack of hard drive and "tiny screen".

Other critics have questioned the need for the laptops in countries which, they said, had more pressing needs such as sanitation and health care.

But Professor Negroponte has always maintained that the project is about education not technology.

However, the green and white XO machines pack a number of innovations which make them suitable for use in remote and environmentally hostile areas.

The machine has no moving parts and can be easily maintained. It has a sunlight-readable display that allows children to use it outside and, importantly for areas with little access to electricity, it is ultra low power and can be charged by a variety of devices including solar panels.

Although OLPC eventually plan to sell the machines for $100 or less, the current price is $188 (£93).

Christmas gift

Initially OLPC has said that it required three million orders of the XO to make production viable.


Governments were originally offered the machines in lots of 250,000.

So far, however, the organisation's only confirmed order is from Uruguay. The South American country has ordered 100,000 of the machines with an option to purchase a further 300,000.

Other governments have expressed interest in the machines.

For example, the government of Mongolia has announced that it plans to launch a pilot project providing 20,000 laptops, to children aged six to 12.

OLPC has also allowed a limited number of the machines to be bought by people in North America through its Give 1 Get 1 programme (G1G1), which will allow members of the public to buy a machine for themselves as well as one for a child in a developing country.

The programme will offer laptops between the 12 and 26 November. OLPC said that the start of production means that people participating in the scheme will receive their XO by December this year.

I ordered an OLPC a few days ago on the Give 1 Get 1 plan. It would have been nice to get 2 to mess with the communications but it cost $424. They say it should show up before December.

umbra

I think that the actual price is like $249 and not $100. I cannot say that i am interested in this.
Ideally they could have done with having more textbooks or computers in schools but that was not to be.
I cannot really say I support this. I would not support my sister giving her 10 year old a computer of their own either.
Some school children have already been found to be downloading p*rn on their free computers.

@rachie surely then if that is case with downloads there should be a pre-installed net nanny.

Text book publishers change books just to make money. Electronic text books don't wear out. A good old text book may be better than the new crappy ones. So a good old text book in electronic form could be used by millions of kids for centuries. Calculus and Newtonian physics are not going to change. The way electricity works is not going to change. The way atoms are constructed and how chemistry works is not going to change. So good electronics text books and instructional software can and probably will change the world.

That laptop has 2 GB of storage. That is 100 times the size of my first hard drive. That could hold more than 1000 BOOKS. Printed text books are so obsolete it ain't funny.

The question is are adults going to supply kids and point them at worthwhile stuff? Most young kids probably can't recognize it on their own. Let's face it, countries like England and the United States could have created recommended reading lists for kids and had them in libraries decades ago. Why haven't they done it? The control of the distribution of knowledge is part of maintaining an economically class structured society. They don't want to make important knowledge cheap and easy to get.

Black Americans are more stingy with knowledge than White people.

This p0rn business is just a trivial excuse from prudes. Find and tell the grammar school kids about some good, useful, interesting and fun stuff to learn and see how much time they waste on p0rn.

umbrarchist

Maybe i am a bit of a prude then lol.
Here is one article on this they were going to set the laptop up with filters but i wonder how well that will work.
News | Africa - Reuters.com
I think every kid that is of school age will get a laptop from 6-16.

I don't support this as i like i said i cannot support giving children their own laptop so young. My sisters daughter already spends to long on the internet doing myspace etc and i don't really like it. Very rarely does she do any homework using the internet. She does have other means to study though and some of these children may not so i know that is different.

I know that you cannot hold back technology. In normal circumstances you shouldn't really a need a computer of your own until you start college that would be more ideal but i know that these circumstances are different.

I do like as well that children in say for Nigeria for example do other things with their time instead of just sitting in front of a computer all day like couch potatoes.

The OLPC is only 500 MHz. It probably couldn't work as a DVD player if you could hook a DVD too it. I agree with you that people and especially children are encouraged to do silly bullsh!t with computers. But a lot of the bullsh!t requires more processing power than the usefull things that can be done with computers. You don't need photorealistic graphics for a geometry education program.

I think it makes sense to only get a used computer between 1 and 1.5 GHz for a grammar or high school kid.

Here is something that might be interesting that doesn't need lots of processing power. It would be good to have a portable book reader though.

Sci Fi E-Books

I think not giving kids computers sounds like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

More, more I'm still not satisfied.


Science Fair Projects - Solar System

I have run that solar system simulator on a 500 MHz machine and a 1.8 GHz. The program limits the speed and the 1.8 was only slightly faster.

Astronomy free software

Should we throw all of that out by not giving kids computers. We had science books sitting on the shelves when I was in grammar school and the nitwit nuns never used them. I wouldn't assume the schools to make the best use of computers. They will let Bill Gates tell them what to do.

OK 433 MHz


Hardware specification - OLPCWiki

umbra

Here is a commentary on it:

YouTube - OLPC: TheServerSide Tech Brief

um

I got an email on the 22nd saying my OLPC wouldn't make it for Christmas. Like I hadn't guessed.

They are now saying before 1/15/08.

um

I am entering this on my OLPC.

It finally showed up. Had to YELL at their service dept.

It found my D-Link wireless connection with no problem. I just had to enter the security code.

Some functions seem kind of slow. Maybe its Python and maybe they just put in too much graphics for a processor this slow. Evaluation in progress. The keyboard is annoyingly small but that is probably fine for a kid.

um

The OLPC has the "nano" editor and I have created the "eed", "h" and "hs" commands on it.

The PS2 keyboard port went out on one of my desktops so I bought a USB keyboard. It works on the OLPC. I should have gotten a folding one to carry around with the OLPC.

um