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2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 20, 2008 12:01 PM
from the xo-is-a-nice-reader-anyhow dept.
from the xo-is-a-nice-reader-anyhow dept.
waderoush writes "At a conference sponsored by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation this morning, OLPC founder unveiled the design for the foundation's second-generation laptop. It's actually not a laptop at all — it's a dual-screen e-book reader (we've got pictures). Negroponte said the foundation hopes that the cost of the new device, which is scheduled for production by 2010, can be kept to $75, in part by using low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players."
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Mobile: Researchers Demo Flippable-Page E-book Reader 101 comments
holy_calamity writes "E-readers are getting better but still limit users to keyboard-style interaction. Researchers at Berkeley and Maryland Universities have changed that with a reader that has two 'pages.' The two displays can be moved like a real book's pages to leaf through a document, or detached to compare and share virtual pages. If they are folded back to create a tablet with displays on each side, you can turn it over to flip pages. A video shows it in action." You may be reminded of the promised second-generation OLPC device, which looks somewhat similar.
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Mobile: Amazon Kindle 2 Leaked, Sony Reader To Get Touch Screen 143 comments
suraj.sun writes with news that the e-book reader market is getting more competitive. The Boy Genius Report got its hands on pictures of the Kindle 2, successor to Amazon's first e-book gadget. The new version is a bit bigger, with edges that are less awkward, and it has a revamped key layout. On the same day these pictures were found, Sony announced that a new model of its Reader would be getting a touchscreen, allowing users to "turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen" and "annotate text using a touchscreen keyboard." The advances for each gadget may help them regain market share against the iPhone, which, according to Forbes, has eclipsed both in popularity as a reading device. Hopefully the competition for sales and the work being done by the OLPC Project will help to drop prices as well.
[+]
Negroponte Hints At Paper-Like Design For XO-3 69 comments
waderoush writes "In May 2008, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, unveiled an e-book like design for the second-generation XO Laptop, consisting of a pair of facing touchscreens. In a new e-mail interview, Negroponte says that design has been thrown out, and that instead the foundation is working on version '1.75' of the existing green-and-white laptop with a more powerful processor, as well as a '3.0' version that would look 'more like a sheet of paper.' Negroponte also addressed a range of other questions about the OLPC project, including the significance of the project to make 1.6 million e-books readable on the XO laptop and the organization's push to reach more children in Latin America, Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan."
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Bye bye books (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe schools in the states can get these and stop spending my hard earned cash on books. Oh wait, they already paid for them. I used the same book my mom used in high school (her name was on it!).
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Interesting)
Have students pay for the printing and the taxpayers pay for the content.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. Are you sure you want the government writing the textbooks?
Currently local governments (or at least state governments in some cases) SELECT the textbooks, but there are options. There isn't that much competition, but in this case ANY competition is a good thing. Government written and mandated textbooks sound pretty scary to me...
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean the government isn't brainwashing you via their "official" textbooks.
Be careful what you ask for.
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know the site listed in the summary is almost gone under the load, but there are lots of sites with news and pictures if you Google for "2nd generation OLPC". Two of them (spread the load!) are Laptop Magazi [laptopmag.com]
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Insightful)
Arrrgh! There was some future computing expo featured on /. a few weeks ago that was full of touchscreen keyboards as well. It's a horrible idea. There's no tactile feedback and no give to absorb the impact, so your fingertips will take much more of a beating than using a conventional keyboard. Touchscreen keyboards are fine for, say, typing a few numbers at a checkout, but for anything like serious input they're just an awful idea.
I never really understood why the OLPC project insists on reinventing the wheel. The mesh networking and screen were impressive tech, but why reinvent the computer desktop in the form of Sugar? Now they're going with an untried form factor. Just build a decent, inexpensive, robust laptop and ship the damn thing. I find it more than a little patronising that kids in less developed countries apparently can't be expected to use similar software to kids in the first world. When they grow up chances are they're gonna be using Windows, Gnome or KDE (or Aqua, if they're incredibly rich by local standards). They're all more like each other than they are like Sugar. I say start 'em young.
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:4, Insightful)
in TFA OLPC 'complains' about how many countries thought they should have designed the whole thing around cellphone chipsets and displays (and inputs) to get even cheaper costs, and their argument is 'cellphones aren't laptops' typical imperialistic ideals...
all you need is something that can display informational text that should be able to be changed slightly each year, and for each region...
and possibly some way for the end user to take quizzes or tests on the material they read....
India wanted $10 laptops, and they made their own program, and i have no doubt they actually used small cheap processors like the ones in cell phones to make their project. they only got down to $50 last i heard, but still OLPC were $200 devices, and this one 'will be $75 in 2010' India expects their 'device' to be a lot cheaper by 2010. (though there is little known about the project in India, I assume they will try to use as much cheap cell phone tech as possible)
they also find the OLPC program to be suspect, why would you target grade school children in less developed countries to use expensive laptops that could be sold on the open market for three times the price paid by their countries for them as educational tools...
why teach children in poor countries on computers, when it's not even standard in developed nations? I definitely agree with India's problems with the OLPC project, consider the countries that have welcomed the project,
"Rwanda (G1G1 pilot)[42]
Americas
Haiti (G1G1 pilot)
Mexico (50,000 laptops bought by billionaire Carlos Slim)
Peru (270,000 laptops bought, now receiving laptops)[43]
United States of America (15,000 laptops bought by Birmingham, Alabama)[44]
Uruguay (100,000 laptops bought, now receiving laptops)[45]
Asia
Afghanistan (G1G1 pilot)
Cambodia (G1G1 pilot)
Mongolia (G1G1 pilot, now receiving 10,000 laptops"
Nigeria was going to order a million, but then elections were held and they haven't solidified the contract, Nigeria the number one source of Internet crime, was the most interested in OLPC.... bah, there is no reason for less developed nations to buy laptops to train kids, it's all a con to get those countries to go into debt to buy things that won't help their economies, that will do nothing but create a cast of children who want fancy electronic gadgets that they can never afford... unless they're as corrupt as Nigeria and create a class of criminals who focus on stealing as much as possible from developed nations...
if OLPC was serious about creating bare-bone education devices they would have modified cellphone style devices, instead of starting around a general purpose CPU with a complex operating system and complicated displays etc etc...
computers were originally designed around micro controllers for microwave ovens, basic text parsing and display is easy and cheap if you don't encumber the device with a fancy OS...
and for 'interactive textbooks' especially when you're targeting less developed countries, should focus on being as simple (and as cheap) as possible. OLPC isn't about bringing electronic textbooks to everyone, it's about making fancy electronic devices and teaching impressionable children to desire them...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out WikiBooks [wikibooks.org]. They aren't quite there yet, but some of their stuff is quite good - and being a wiki, your inputs are encouraged.
With cheap laptops/ebook readers on the horizon, and projects like WikiBooks / Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] I am hopeful that we are only a few years from prolific material availability.
Also, slightly off topic - but since you mentioned schools I'd like to refer you to Lockhart's Lament [maa.org]. Do we even really need text books?
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Informative)
It's a great project, and kinda fun (for geeks like us).
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. You could get the top experts to put out free ebook texts that were total works of art, where not a single complaint could be lodged against them and school districts would still buy texts from the usual suspects. Too many bribes to overcome.
Think it through. Go examime what states (just in the US) spend on texts and imagine how much less exensive it would be for them to pool a fraction of that money into paying quality experts to write really good sections/chapters/units/etc. on every topic, illustrated by top notch artists and have all the supplementary materials created, all as works for hire and then released into the public domain as official government publications. Then each school district could pick and choose the chapters they want and either have em published on demand or loaded onto ebook readers. Either option would be far less expensive than what they currently pay. And since only the chapters actually being used would be printed, kids wouldn't be lugging around so much dead weight.
Doing it this way would mean that after the initial expense was sunk only minor revisions would be needed in successive years. But it would be a net financial win in the FIRST set of textbooks issued to students and all of the current fights over textbook content would instantly become local issues amendable to the local political process, thus the warfare would end.
But what I just proposed is totally self evident, so that it doesn't happen and has no realistic chance of happening means the fix is in.
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Insightful)
If I could carry my entire semesters books in one reader I would be in heaven. All college students would love this.
Parent
barking up the wrong tree (Score:4, Funny)
Like it or not, good textbooks cost a lot of money because few people can write them and students are willing and able to pay those prices.
Why are few people able to write them? Because tenure committees and university boards demand publications and grant money and that's what professors have to spend their time on. Writing a textbook is a career limiting move, and professors simply don't have the time to create their own teaching materials from scratch, given all the other obligations imposed on them.
If you don't like that, go to a teaching oriented school, and/or complain to your university and state legislators that they should set different priorities.
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Funny)
or Bush's... whichever option is worth more karma.
Parent
Re:Bye bye books (Score:5, Funny)
You've got to look at the bright side of life.
Abstinence-only education tends to encourage casual oral sex (frequent, one would hope) as a substitute for losing one's virginity. Or making babies.
Who could be against more blowjobs? Not me.
Parent
laptop is an e-book reader? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong summary and title (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong summary and title (Score:4, Informative)
The plan is $75. That doesn't mean it's any more realistic than the original $100 goal for the XO-1. I'd be surprised if they could get it below $150 at launch. The only way $75 is possible is if companies are donating hardware to it.
Parent
Soo... (Score:5, Insightful)
And last week I thought that this project couldn't get any farther from good.
Re:Soo... (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a book. It's, I imagine, going to have an x86 cpu and an OS capable of running Activities already written for the XO-1, plus anything else imaginable.
Negroponte's presentation showed two kids playing pong on one laptop and suggested the same could be done with games like chess or checkers, as one example. It is a laptop with two touchscreen displays, which is nothing short of amazing.
Parent
Re:Soo... (Score:5, Informative)
That article also contains the news that Give 1 Get 1 will be restarting in August or September.
Parent
Re:Soo... (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck, Im still pissed there's no affordable e-book reader out there. I already have a couple of nice laptops and a nice desktop. I dont need another machine, but I would love a cheap (sub 150 dollar) e-book reader that accepted all sorts of formats and was easy on the eyes. I dont know why sony and amazon think the price point for these things is 300+ dollars. It 99 dollars or less. If the XO people do this it will be pretty revolutionary.
Parent
that's not the only factor (Score:4, Interesting)
... and in part by waiting until 2010 to make it. In two years you'll be able to buy a used first-gen iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle for $75. At least he's aware of it: "Negroponte said the foundation plans to bring out the second-generation device by 2010. By that time, he added, the cost of the original XO Laptop will also have been brought below $100."
Also, the "low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players" bit worries me some, since those displays don't have a particularly high pixel density. Who wants a 7, 8, 9" screen to read from that's only ~720x480? Yeah, it'll work, but it'll be far from ideal.
Power usage? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Power usage? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Fool me once, shame on you (Score:5, Interesting)
I have nothing but rage and contempt for Negroponte and the OLPC project. I will not support a project that betrays its contributors by abandoning the principles that motivated them.
Windows on the OLPC is an outrage and clear evidence that the OLPC project is no longer about helping children and only about making money and creating a new form "Microsoft Tax" for the poor and developing nations.
Its bullshit. Its like giving money and time to a charity called "one meal per child" and find out it has decided to use your contribution to bring dollar off coupons for McDonalds happy meals.
Re:Fool me once, shame on you (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, helping Microsoft expand its monopoly is bad for the world. Its bad for the industry. The amount of money and control that Microsoft exercises because of its monopoly has ruined the ISO, destroyed companies, and kept back innovation in the marketplace.
Selling "Windows" when they could give away free software is not a good will gesture.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The economic facts are against your argument. Assuming the market stays constant and additional competition does not increase the marketplace (as almost always happens), taking the gross and net income of Microsoft, and divide it across 6 companies, 3 OS companies roughly balanced between 25% and 30% market share, and 3 office product companies, again, 25% to 30% market share.
The six companies would employ more people and have a
Re:Fool me once, shame on you (Score:5, Insightful)
As has been pointed out repeatedly, "educating kids" is an utter impossibility when OLPC+Windows combination is involved. The term you are looking for is "indoctrination". It is so for many, many reasons mentioned already a million times here, not the least of them the lack of any useful free "educational" software for XP, never you mind the storage for it on the OLPC.
Using "ANY" computer, "education" does not make. If that was the case, a far more cost effective way then the OLPC would be to simply ship used throw-away computers that clog our city dumps here (some of them far more powerful then the OLPC will ever be) to Africa in bulk.
You are confusing granting haphazard access to some fraction of the Western commercial technology, which requires a (very expensive) ecosystem of other commercial technology to be useful and which will never be available at the prices those kids can afford, with "educating" them. This is a purely corporatist view of the world and if it were up to people like you, education in the West would consist of giving kids a brand-name calculator (with no instructions) and calling it a "mathematics and electronics course" and as the parent poster insightfully mentioned, "a cooking course" would consist of a bunch of McDonalds coupons, etc and so on.
And there is of course the wee little bit of the matter of active mis-representations Negroponte has engaged in over the years on behalf of the OLPC project, but I guess that is far too esoteric for you to grasp.
In the light of the actual facts you should take your own advice on this.
Parent
Re:Fool me once, shame on you (Score:4, Informative)
Windows has no momentum, it is an obstacle. Vista is a joke. People are sticking with XP. Macintosh is starting to out-sell Wintell on high end desktops.
The *only* reason Windows hasn't been abandoned by its disgruntled users is because of Microsoft's continued illegal actions in maintaining its monopoly. All too many users say "I hate it, but have to use Windows."
There is *no* practical reason to put Windows on the OLPC. It brings nothing to the table but additional cost. The only purpose for it is to satisfy a vengeful and corrupt monopolist.
Parent
right, so? (Score:5, Funny)
Negroponte said the foundation hopes that the cost of the new device, which is scheduled for production by 2010, can be kept to $75
Is that 75 Real Dollars, or $75 Negroponte Distortion Field Dollars? And it'd be nice if the press actually took a stab at how realistic those "hopes" are- I mean, I hope that someday I'll shit strawberry-flavored lollipops while driving in my flying car, on autopilot while I bonk my supermodel wife...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
They will be able to sell this new device for under $100, this time for sure. Okay, I'll agree that using standard DVD player screens might help. But why two screens then? Isn't the screen the most power-hungry part of the device? The OLPC screen has special power-management features; won't standard screens burn more power? And won't having two screens double the power?
The article spoke of "dual touch screens". At first I thought this meant "multi-touch screens" but now I think it just means both screens will be touch screens. Even so, how do you make a standard DVD player screen into a touch screen?
And once again. Why two screens? Yes, it looks more like a book. Big deal. This dual-screen design has a hinge! It's got to be easier and cheaper to make a slab tablet device, with maybe a hinged cover (note that a cover has no electrical connections and need not break a waterproof seal).
So, no keyboard; just an onscreen virtual keyboard. I'm guessing no onboard camera, since none was mentioned and they are being aggressive about price. Not one word about openness of software stack... Negroponte just doesn't care anymore, I guess.
The OLPC project hasn't just jumped the shark. They went out and found a new shark and they are jumping over it now.
steveha
OLPC has to change its name (Score:3, Funny)
How about spending some time on the education part (Score:4, Insightful)
Not an eBook Reader at all (Score:3, Informative)
It is a functional laptop in an eBook-like shell. Just look at the pictures. There is a pic of a kid holding the thing like a laptop with a virtual keyboard on the bottom display, and a game being played on the top display. This indicates that it has much more than eBook capabilities, and likely incorporates multi-touch capability.
Smart (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce Perens vindicated (Score:4, Interesting)
Another great idea from Mary Lou Jepsen (Score:4, Informative)
Mary Lou's vision of the next generation of display technology is:
- Daylight readable
- Color
- Fast enough for video
- Embedded Wireless
- Touchscreen
- Embedded solid-state storage
- Extremely low power (1 watt)
- Embedded battery
- Battery life measured in days, not hours
- Embedded processor
Mary Lou's point is that with a machine like this, who needs a heavy-weight OS? Just about everything one needs on the OS side would already be in the hardware.
These are clearly the ideas behind what Nicholas is describing.
who is he going to get in bed with now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, Mr. Negroponte, make up your mind what you want people to volunteer for. An eBook reader? A constructionist learning device? A low-cost laptop to sell stripped down Windows versions to the developing world? When you figure it out, maybe the volunteers will come back.
But don't bet on it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I've lost confidence (Score:5, Interesting)
The truly sad part is that it is just so obvious that the fix is in at OLPC. If it were true that they were having trouble getting acceptance because of Linux, and that a 'product' OS was needed to close deals, I can believe that part. The real world has idiots in it. But Steve offered em OS X for zero dollars and they refused on the ground it wasn't open source.
And I remember the way they argued so irrationally when anyone suggested a non x86 CPU to lower power consumption when the ONLY reason to put an x86 in a machine like that was to keep the door open to Windows.
Parent