OLPC Says No Plans for Consumer Release

Gr88pe writes "The One Laptop Per Child product has clarified that they have not made a decision on whether or not to carry out a consumer release of the XO laptop, despite previous reports. From the article: 'OLPC told Ars Technica in a statement that the company has no plans for a consumer version of the laptop. "Contrary to recent reports, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is not planning a consumer version of its current XO laptop, designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world," said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC chairman.' They are considering a number of plans, but have made no formal decision."

Well, which is it?

[LotsOfPhil (982823)]

"Contrary to recent reports, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is not planning a consumer version of its current XO laptop, designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world," said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC chairman.

I thought it wasn't for the really poor people. I thought the laptop was for countries that were sufficiently developed that they could focus on education as opposed to sanitation, starvation, etc.

Re:Well, which is it?

[drinkypoo (153816)]

I thought it wasn't for the really poor people. I thought the laptop was for countries that were sufficiently developed that they could focus on education as opposed to sanitation, starvation, etc.

Uh, education is the only answer to problems with sanitation, starvation, etc. If someone just comes in and does things for you, then you become dependent on them. It's been shown in the past that when you give a lot of food away, people produce less food, people are healthier, people are more able to reproduce... and their ability to produce food is decreased while their need for food is increased.

But if you instead educate people and teach them the values of sanitation, the dangers of unprotected sex, new methods of food cultivation, production, preparation, and preservation... then you have given them a gift which will benefit them every day, inform their every action, and which they can pass on to their children.

Education is the only solution to the problems of the third world. We cannot solve their problems for them. Even if we solved every problem we would have created a world full of dependents. If that's really what you want, then by all means focus on just giving the necessities of daily life to people.

I'm not saying we shouldn't give people food - but what I am saying is that we shouldn't give people food (or anything else) without giving them education and that education is the most valuable gift we can give them.

Re:Well, which is it?

[namityadav (989838)]

I agree completely. Although I am still not sure if I'll be as convinced by your statements if I replace "education" with "laptops".

What I am trying to say is that although education is certainly the only way to solve the problems in the third-world, I am still not sure if OLPC is the best way to provide that education.

Re:Well, which is it?

[namityadav (989838)]

Okay, here goes my karma .. but dude, CALM DOWN !! It's not like I've kidnapped your kid for ransom or something.

The post above mine was talking about how "education" is the only answer to solving the misery in the third-world, not free food or free service for sanitation. And although I agree to his points about education, I don't think that OLPC is a synonym to "education" (YET, at least). And although I definitely approve (Not that it matters) and appreciate the OLPC concept, that does not mean that I think that OLPC is the best way to provide education at this point and time.

It's like saying that although drinking soda is better than not drinking any liquid at all, but it's still not as good as drinking water.

Or, put another way...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Light a fire for a man, warm him for a day.

Light a man on fire, and warm him for the rest of his life.

Re:Well, which is it?

[DragonWriter (970822)]

There is a surplus of used computers in the world, these are the computers people in poor areas need.

No, they aren't. They aren't designed for use in rural areas with limited power and other infrastructure, the OLPC machines are. Further, the used computers aren't to one standard, the OLPC machines are, which enables national ministries of education buying them to support them more easily, and have standard software and content that works the same on all of them. Etc.

They would be cheaper than $150 each to buy and ship,

Not much, if at all.

and they would be of far more use than these crappy laptops.

Actually, they'd be far less use. They aren't designed for the use they'd be put to, they often aren't reliable to start with, they don't present a common, open platform. They don't, unlike the OLPC machines, have keyboards specific to the receiving country to accommodate national languages. In short, they are nearly, if not entirely, useless for the role that the OLPC machines are targetted for.

One of the more interesting ideas

[soft_guy (534437)]

One of the more interesting ideas that I have seen is to allow people to buy an OLPC for say, double the price, thus also buying one for a child oversees.

The part of it that would be of interest to me would be a system that would allow a westerner to just buy one of these for a child oversees.

Re:One of the more interesting ideas

[Rik van Riel (4968)]

I've seen an early XO machine in action at the office (I'm lucky enough to have some of the XO team as colleagues) and I know I want one for my self, too.

I would not mind buying two for children overseas - especially if the system of charitable contributions is set up so we end up with a "negative salestax" - but I do not want to miss out on one for myself either.

The screen may be a bit small compared to what I use on my desktop, but it's got a decent resolution and can be read outside. I want to be able to sit on the deck or in the garden and edit wiki pages, browse the web, listen to music or show stuff using the built-in camera.

The XO is also much more rugged than normal laptops. You can actually take it outside without worrying about it breaking because of dust or some raindrops. I want one :)

I've got a great idea..

[QuantumG (50515)]

how about we round up all these people who want to play with an OLPC laptop and ship them off to one of the pilot nations to train teachers or children how to use it. You get to play with it, the kids get someone to teach them, it's win, win right?

clarification?

[User 956 (568564)]

The One Laptop Per Child product has clarified that they have not made a decision on whether or not to carry out a consumer release of the XO laptop

So they clarified with ambiguity. Good show.

Production

[MBCook (132727)]

I've heard good arguments for this (more people hacking, less incentive for a gray/black market, buy one for the price of two so the second goes to a kid), but could they be taking this position because of production? After all if they want to give a million of these away and people like /.ers buy 100,000... while that would mean money to give 100,000 laptops away to kids we just bit 10% of their production away. I seem to remember reading somewhere that based on the number they will be giving out it will be one of the top 4 laptop "brands" in the world almost immediately. Perhaps they simply can't spare the production at this time?

Re:Production

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Perhaps they simply can't spare the production at this time?

If that is true, then they are probably having problems with production already. Instead of giving away a laptop for each one purchased, they could use that money to improve production capacity, to do research on further cost reductions, or to pay for additional software development. It doesn't necessarily have to be a buy-two-get-one scheme to be useful.

That just seems dumb...

[JoeLinux (20366)]

When you have many people purchasing, you can order in larger quantities, and lower prices all around.

If people demand it, the market should supply it.

I say we develop a "one child per laptop" organization. It's function would be to convince governments to develop laws mandating that you can only have a child if you have a laptop.

Why the hell not,

[vespazzari (141683)]

I think plenty of people where happy with the idea of buy 2 get 1. I would love to get my hands on one or 2 of those. It seems stupid to limit your marked to begin with. Unless I am misunderstanding the article, which seems to have to different points going on. I understand that the development is not geared toward the developed world but that doesn't mean that some will not want it.

Re:Why the hell not,

[afxgrin (208686)]

I was happy pledging to buy one for 3 times the price, and apparently that's not good enough. I just don't understand the logic behind restricting consumer's from purchasing one. I don't care to own a cheap laptop, i'm more interested in developing software that will operate well on these laptops. The idea is to push the hardware to the limit, as I might want to work with some of these people who will be eventually owning these machines.

Re:Why the hell not,

[DragonWriter (970822)]

Several reasons why not, most notably:

1. Selling the same model would undermine the social-disapproval mechanism the project hopes will discourage a gray market in the OLPC machines; which is why the program has often said they are looking at making a distinctive derivative version of the machine for individual sale.

2. The price point is controlled by the fact that they aren't supporting an infrastructure for individual sales/support/etc., only selling to national ministries of education in enormous lots. Paying twice the cost that governments were buying them for in bulk wouldn't be enough to support commercial individual sale and have excess "profit" to subsidize delivering one to the developing world.

It's still a good funding idea...

[grapeape (137008)]

Several of the features of the Laptop initiative arent things that the average power user is going to want or need, but they are features that would be great for niche areas. One that comes to mind is journaling for camping and hiking, emergency services, etc. Im sure there are hundreds of others. I know I would have enjoyed having one when I had phone service but no power during an ice storm a few years back.

One idea I heard floating around was the to buy one for yourself, you would have to buy one towards the initiative. To me that sounds like a win win, they get more in contributions to the cause, people that want to play with one get the opportunity and production orders increase which usually drives down costs even more.

These guys seem to have no Goddamn clue

[Rogerborg (306625)]

Why would they not want to sell the initial run of these things at a markup to us decadent westerners in order to get the volumes up and bring down the unit cost? Do they not understand the concept of flushing out problems by unloading overpriced units on early adopters? They really need to speak to Apple.

Good Decision

[Suriken (922504)]

Definitely a good decision if there is going to be a shortage (at the start) of these products in the developing countries. reportedly enough for some to sell on the "gray-market"
(Bletsas acknowledges that some abuse is inevitable. "Will some parents sell their children's laptops on the gray market? Sure." ) source [linuxtoday.com]
Yes this is only initially, but if the children that these laptops are designed for are missing out because some random wants to play with it in his apartment along with his 2 pc's his other laptop, his pda and 3 game consoles something is seriously amiss, regardless of how much he pays for it.

I too think it may be good

[erroneus (253617)]

We all see the OLPC thing as a fun little toy. We all want to play with it. But for us to have a toy to play with may easily backfire into a situation where the next set of 419'ers or click-fraud farms are enabled through the use of OLPC devices.

If the use an application of these things are considerably more limited and not general purpose, then that could go a long way to prevent their abuse.

Everybody knows

[KalvinB (205500)]

there are no poor people in first world countries that could possibly benefit from having a cheap PC. /sarcasm

If they don't *know* that this laptop would be a huge benefit to poor people in ALL countries, then they're either being threatened by the likes of Dell (hard to sell $500 POS desktops when you can get a durable $100 laptop) or are completely blind to the people who are right under their noses.

As long as I have a computer with an internet connection I will never be broke. I may be homeless, but I'll never be broke. But, I guess people don't care about the homeless people in say New York that could use a laptop to get started in developing web-sites to bring in some extra money (or even to find resources like food banks and shelters) to help them get back on their feet.

Chanel Conflict...

[WoTG (610710)]

I wonder if the hesitancy on the part of them to release this for consumer purchase is due to pressure from AMD and the other component manufacturers. (AMD manufactures the CPU in the OLPC) They don't want to sell millions of low-end CPUs, screens, etc. in the Developed World... they are much better off with the current entry level of $500 or so for a laptop.

Personally, I would consider converting my home server to one of these OLPCs. A couple hundred MHz, a couple USB ports for storage, and low power usage sound about right.

Re:Chanel Conflict...

[DragonWriter (970822)]

Probably not. The hesitancy is because OLPC sees social disapproval as a key component of discourage theft and resale, and therefore doesn't want to sell the same computers to the public; they've stated more than once that once they get rolling with the main units, they may look at a distinctive commercial derivative for individual sale.

tiny

[by Anonymous Coward]

guys, just created this account to tell you the thing is *tiny*. been playing with gen 1 for 3 weeks. you know the Simpsons episode where Homer gets so fat he can't press a single button on the telephone? That's not me. :) Yet if I type on the keyboard with my fingers so close they rub, my fingers are still too wide to fit on the keyboard. It truly is a keyboard for children. Maybe someone can post some photos next to a ruler. I've heard more than once "it's smaller than I thought". don't consider this a regular laptop. it's fun, trust me, but physically a very small unit.

Re:Someone should design a PDA

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

I agree that the OLPC is designed well and sounds really cool, but in practice I think most people in the developed world would be hard-pressed to find actual uses for it.

90% of "computing" work involves writing documents. This would do fine for the purpose. As it would for chatting, e-mail, and a lot of web browsing.

Most adults wouldn't be caught outside using this:

I seem to recall Apple selling quite a few clamshell iBooks. If anything, this is a bit more elegant and tasteful. I'd certainly buy one or two.

-b.