[NYTr] Laptop with a Mission Widens Its Audience (and Raises Its Price)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Two items on the low-cost "one laptop per child" campaign that
originated years ago at MIT.  The mainstream media, once again, are
treating the whole story as something new. The only thing "new" appears
to be that its projected price has doubled. The idea was to have a $100
pricetag. The dollar hasn't plunged that much in value. -NY Transfer]

sent by tsimonds -activ-l


SF Chronicle - Nov 12, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/12/BUENT8USM.DTL

Donated XO laptops come loaded

by David Einstein

Q: The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child is advertising a
program that lets you donate a computer to a child in a developing
country and also get one for your own child (or yourself), all for
$400. Does the computer have the hardware and software necessary to
retrieve e-mail and surf the Internet?

A: It does indeed. The XO, as the machine is called, is an innovative
laptop that runs on the Linux operating system. It comes with a Web
browser, an e-mail program, and software for everyday activities such as
word processing and playing music and videos. The computer is about half
the weight of a typical laptop, runs much cooler (it doesn't need a fan)
and uses far less power, so its battery can last six hours or longer.

Its most remarkable feature, however, is a "mesh" network, which
automatically connects the computer to any available wireless Internet
network, as well as to all other XO computers within range so they can
communicate and share files.

There are some drawbacks to the XO, when you compare it with a Windows
or Mac laptop. Its screen is small (7 1/2 inches), and it has no hard
drive - just 1 GB of flash storage. But it has three USB ports, so you
should be able to connect a flash drive or external hard drive.

The XO was designed by folks from MIT's Media Lab to bring computing to
schoolchildren in poor countries. You can't buy just one of the
computers, but you can get one by participating in the "Give 1 Get 1"
program you mentioned, starting Tuesday at laptopgiving.org.

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

                        ***

The New York Times - Oct 4, 2007 (& Correction Oct 8, 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/circuits/04pogue.html

State of the Art

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience

By DAVID POGUE

In November, youll be able to buy a new laptop thats spillproof,
rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. Its fanless, its silent and it
weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy
activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video
camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad
controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200.

The computer, if you hadnt already guessed, is the fabled $100 laptop
thats been igniting hype and controversy for three years. Its an effort
by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost,
high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion
educationally underserved children in poor countries.

The concept: if a machine is designed smartly enough, without the bloat
of standard laptops, and sold in large enough quantities, the price can
be brought way, way down. Maybe not down to $100, as O.L.P.C. originally
hoped, but low enough for developing countries to afford millions of
them one per child.

The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90
degrees, it looks like a child.

O.L.P.C. slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the
machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world  for a
period of two weeks, in November. The program is called Give 1, Get 1,
and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop
(and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent
to a student in a poor country.

The group does worry that people might compare the XO with $1,000
Windows or Mac laptops. They might blog about their disappointment,
thereby imperiling O.L.P.C.s continuing talks with third world
governments.

Its easy to see how that might happen. Theres no CD/DVD drive at all, no
hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. The Linux operating system doesnt
run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows
programs. The membrane-sealed, spillproof keyboard is too small for
touch-typing by an adult.

And then theres the look of this thing. Its made of shiny green and
white plastic, like a Fisher-Price toy, complete with a handle. With its
two earlike antennas raised, it could be Shreks little robot friend.

And sure enough, the bloggers and the ignorant have already begun to
spit on the XO laptop. Dude, for $400, I can buy a real Windows laptop,
they say.

Clearly, the XOs mission has sailed over these peoples heads like a 747.

The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely
amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware
and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough  some of them
not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.

In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the
laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It
runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs
$10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges  versus 500 on a regular
laptop battery.

The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a
typical business laptop. Thats one reason it gets such great battery
life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of
pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that,
although only one foot square, provides enough power to recharge or
power the machine.

Speaking of bright sunshine: the XOs color screen is bright and, at 200
dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret
identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The
resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, its
almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer.

The XO offers both regular wireless Internet connections and something
called mesh networking, which means that all the laptops see each other,
instantly, without any setup  even when theres no Internet connection.

With one press of a button, you see a map. Individual XO logos 
color-coded to differentiate them  represent other laptops in the area;
you connect with one click. (You never double-click in the XOs visual,
super-simple operating system. You either point with the mouse or click
once.)

This feature has some astonishing utility. If only one laptop has an
Internet connection, for example, the others can get online, too, thanks
to the mesh network. And when O.L.P.C. releases software upgrades, one
laptop can broadcast them to other nearby laptops.

Power users will snort at the specs of this machine. It has only one
gigabyte of storage  all flash memory  with 20 percent of that occupied
by the XOs system software. And the processor is feeble by conventional
standards. Starting up takes two minutes, and switching between programs
is poky.

Once in a program, though, the speed is fine; it turns out that a light
processor is plenty if the software is written compactly and smartly.
(O.L.P.C. points out that despite gigantic leaps in processing power,
todays business laptops dont feel any faster than they did a few years
ago. The operating systems and programs have added so much bloat that
they absorb the speed gains.)

The built-in programs are equally clever. Theres a word processor, Web
browser, calculator, PDF textbook reader, some games (clones of Tetris
and Connect 4), three music programs, a painting application, a chat
program and so on. The camera module permits teachers, for the first
time, to send messages home to illiterate parents.

There are also three programming environments of different degrees of
sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of
almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how
their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making
changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)

Theres real brilliance in this emphasis on understanding the computer
itself. Many nations in XOs market have few natural resources, and the
global need for information workers grows with every passing day.

Most of the XOs programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is
another ingenious twist. Any time youre word processing, making music,
taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a
Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the
mesh-network map, so that other people can see what youre doing, or
work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can
collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or
someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music
program. Youve never seen anything like it.

The pair of laptops I reviewed had incomplete power-management software,
beta-stage software and occasional cosmetic glitches. But O.L.P.C. and
its worldwide army of open-source (volunteer) programmers expect to
polish things by the time the assembly line starts to roll in November.

No, the biggest obstacle to the XOs success is not technology  its
already a wonder  but fear. Overseas ministers of education fear that
changing the status quo might risk their jobs. Big-name computer makers
fear that the XO will steal away an overlooked two-billion-person
market. Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria
protection and clean water far more than computers.

(The founder, Nicholas Negropontes, response: Nobody I know would say,
By the way, lets hold off on education. Education happens to be a
solution to all of those same problems.)

But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles
and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop thats tough and simple
enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds
engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and
collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and
learning styles.

Its a technological breakthrough, for sure. Now lets just hope it breaks
through the human barriers.

Correction: October 8, 2007

The State of the Art column in Business Day on Thursday, about the One
Laptop Per Child notebook computer, misstated the name of a program that
will allow consumers in the industrialized world to buy one computer and
have a second donated to a student in a developing country. It is Give
1, Get 1  not the reverse.