OLPC Cost Rises To $188 Per Laptop

Arathon writes "The amazing '$100 laptop' designed by the 'One Laptop Per Child' program isn't going to make it out the door for that price. CNN reports that the laptops are now expected to cost $188 apiece when they come out later this fall. This is expected to make the program's appeal potentially much smaller, since the developers were relying on the mind-bogglingly low-price to hook governments into the concept of buying laptops for their people. OLPC's spokesman guarantees that the price won't rise further, to 'above $190'. The price differential is being blamed on raw materials costs and currency fluctuation. Is this the end of the OLPC's newsworthiness, or should we continue to hope that it will make the difference that so many have said it will?"

Price will drop fast

In 6 months it will still be a very useful machine and be a lot cheaper.

Re:Price will drop fast

They could start calling it the 100 pound laptop.

100 Lbs !

Isn't that kind of heavy for a laptop?

Oh wait... Never mind.

Re:Price will drop fast

wrong,
currency fluctuation means everything bought in foreign countries with american dollars is currently much more expensive. Perhaps noticed:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6990570.stm [bbc.co.uk]
(this is again the price of the euro, but the situation is similar for several other currencies, I do not know where OLPC buys most of their components, but I guess they have to pay more in dollars now).

Currency "fluctuation"

> Currency "fluctuation", a.k.a. inflation

Currency fluctuation doesn't refer to inflation, but to the low exchange rate for dollar

> may raise this by $5 tops

The dollar has dropped 10% in value compared to second largest currency (the EURO) since the announcement of the OLPC.

Re:Currency "fluctuation"

Check again, 13 states now, for a total of 316 million people, also places like Monaco, the Vatican, Andorra etc which are not EU but use the Euro. Cyprus and Malta will join in January 2008. Also, a number of countries are in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which means that while they don't actually use the Euro, their exchange rates are linked to it within certain boundaries.

Interestingly, several countries have started to use Euro for foreign trade because of the isntability of the dollar, oddly enough including North Korea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone [wikipedia.org]

Price did not rise much outside of the USA.

Come on now. "currency fluctuation" refers to the US dollar sinking.

That's not going to matter in Argintina, Brazil, Nigeria (well maybe there...), and so on.

Re:Price did not rise much outside of the USA.

It will matter if the laptops are produced in the US

Even expensive laptops are not produced in the US, and the reason is costs. In the USA it would cost you $100 per laptop to just power it up, check that it works, and put it into a box. I seriously doubt that you could squeeze into this price the large amount of manual labor that assembly of notebooks typically requires. Anyone who opened a notebook knows how complicated these things are, because they are so densely packed, and you can't really automate most of the assembly steps because they require human hands and vision and touch (like the tiny Molex connectors which must be installed with tweezers.) It's best, cost-wise, if these laptops never even come close to the USA.

Re:Price did not rise much outside of the USA.

Wouldn't it be pretty ironic if they ended up using cheap child labor to make these?

Price difference

Yes, $188 is almost twice the $100 original cost. $100 was the goal, right? Even though OLPC didn't make its goal, $188 is still a ridiculously cheap laptop--no other manufacturer can match that (if they could, they'd be making it)--that will be benefiting people throughout the globe.

Re:Price difference

Yes, $188 is almost twice the $100 original cost. $100 was the goal, right? Even though OLPC didn't make its goal, $188 is still a ridiculously cheap laptop--no other manufacturer can match that (if they could, they'd be making it)

Hehe, do you realize how deliciously ironic your post is [hothardware.com].

And that machine I link to is actually better than the OLPC. And will sell for the same price to everyone (you'll need to pay 2x or 3x the OLPC price to get it yourself). And can run Windows (XP and less) if need be.

In fact, what OLPC proved is, that commercial entities are already doing their best. Negroponte ranted left and right how the greedy vendors could make a cheap PC but couldn't, but now his dream is vaporware and he's arrived at a pretty pedestrian sublaptop, that has its analog for the same price with the good ol' commercial vendors.

Re:Price difference

I dunno, I'd say that Eee (ee?) is after a different demographic.

Does the Asus have its own manual power source, like the OLPC's crank or pedal? Nope? There goes everyone in the world without reliable electricity.

Does it have super-idiot-proof software? Not really. Heck, even I (as a fairly experienced computer-user) don't instantly understand half of OpenOffice's features. How is that gonna work for people who've (a) never used a computer before and (b) have no access to tech support?

Is it durable? Like, durable enough to make up for the fact that some potential users would have no access to any sort of computer repairs?

And so on. I'd personally prefer the Asus one, living here in the US with regular electricity, WiFi, and so on, but a whole lot of the OLPC's target audience would be using the Asuses (Asi?) as paperweights pretty quick.

Re:Price difference

> "...deliciously ironic..."

(1) The ASUS Eee PC is priced at $249. That is 30%+ more expensive than the OLPC XO-1.

(2) The ASUS Eee PC *only* *exists* because Intel hates the AMD-based OLPC project. Intel created and funded a competitive reference platform, the Classmate PC, and this forms the basis for the Eee PC.

Of course, the OLPC is a non-profit social welfare program that actually achieves its goals when it forces Intel to dramatically drop prices and cut zero-profit deals with the likes of, say, Pakistan.

This is not irony. This is *accomplishment*.

And yes, I'll be buying an Eee, and thanking *Negroponte* -- not Intel -- for making it happen. :D

Re:To be fair

Sure, a Western adult would prefer an Eee - I can't wait to test drive one myself. But you omit a few other differences that demonstrate why OLPC is better for their target market - children in developing nations.

Eee networking - conventional wifi-to-Internet
OLPC networking - mesh ad hoc OR wifi-to-Internet

Eee screen - conventional indoor only
OLPC screen - unique dual-mode, clearly readable even in bright sunlight

Eee hardware - conventional non-rugged Western office / home environment; requires stable AC power
OLPC hardware - sealed against elements, child-tolerant; runs on AC power, hand or foot power, solar cell

Eee software - conventional Linux
OLPC software - highly customized for non-computer-literate children

Eee development - requires conventional developer tools; system restore requires external media
OLPC development - "show source" button allows children to explore and modify most aspects of the environment with nothing more than the built-in Python editor; and versioned filesystem ensures machine can be rolled all the way back to original state with no external media support

The OLPC is very unconventional, and is much better suited to children in developing classrooms than any other machine on the market. *That* is what makes it special, not an arbitrarily low price point.

Re:Price difference

ASUS=Taiwan. Where do you think the OLPC will be made? Taiwan--just like everything else! The manufacturer makes just about every other damned laptop, too. So, how, precisely, do you believe inflation of the U.S. dollar (currently 2.5%) is strongly related to third party prices from a foreign manufacturer, who is in an country with an inflation rate one fifth of that of the US? Put the facts where your mouth is.

Secondly, contrary to what you're blathering on about earlier, the ASUS EEE and the OLPC are hardly comparable. They don't target the same users or market. The OLPC is designed to be eminently durable (it's well sealed against dust and water), to last a long time on battery (it gets 2000mAh more than the OLPC to get 3 hours run time vs 5+ the OLPC offers), it has a monitor that's better suited to reading textbook style information on the computer, and is designed to have incredible wireless range, so it can serve as a mesh network node. And the ASUS recently became more expensive-$199 to $250.

You need to learn that "better" is a subjective metric when you're comparing stuff like this. Is a Cray faster at computing stuff than the computer on your desk? Absolutely--but that doesn't mean that a Cray makes a good desktop machine, any more than a desktop makes a good super computer. Each is completely unfit for the other's job. Apple and oranges.

Only USD

It's okay, it's 188 USD, not 188 in some highly valued currency.

Or change the project name

0.532 Laptops Per Child

Re:Or change the project name

0.532 Laptops Per Child

Or just cut the children in half. Worked in the Bible.
     

Re:Or change the project name

What? No, you're backwards! If you cut the children in half there will be FEWER laptops per child since there will be more kids.

What you need to do is duck tape a few together. Heck, tape them together in bundles of three and you'll have the 1.5 laptops per child p.

Name Change in order

How about the 100 pound laptop.

According to Google Calculator
188 U.S. dollars = 92.7204577 British pounds

Apple

Apple should release a $200 iPod touch with increased functionality and reduced specs for children in third world countries. It could easily compete with OLPC at that price.

It's not about price (only)..

The price of the OLPC laptop is becoming a recurring subject. I think the price of the laptops is important, but not the most important story to tell. The OLPC laptop has already revolutionized the design of the laptop. On the hardware side we have the extreme power efficiency, the high resolution screen, the cranking mechanism, and last but not least the ergonomic, rugged design. On the software side there is the open firmware, the mesh network, the new user interface, Bitfrost, and probably a few other things I forgot. And all of this is made possible by open source software. The OLPC laptop has set a new standard, and none of the so called competitors from Intel, or other manufacturers comes even close. The competing machines are just cheap standard laptops, with none of the qualities that make the OLPC laptop special. Whatever the price of the laptop, and even if the whole project ultimately fails, the design of the OLPC laptop will have an enormous impact on the future of the PC. And because it is all open souce we can build on its foundations. All of that is much more important than todays price of the hardware.

what is the REAL price?

Let's be economically realistic here. If you look at the OLPC progress timescale here:
http://laptop.org/en/vision/progress/index.shtml [laptop.org]
You will notice that the price tag of 100$ per laptop initiates back in the end of 2004.

Now, I hope all of you here have heard about an economic phenomenon called inflation - the process where governments inflate money supply making your dollars buy less. Very few know that for the past decade or so the government has been massaging the official inflation numbers to make them appear lower - this allows them to make fewer and fewer payments on inflation adjusted liabilities such as social security. However, they still publish all the numbers one needs to calculate the actual inflation, and some people have been doing that, look for example here:
http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data [shadowstats.com]
Notice how inflation has been running steadily at about 10% for the last few years. Today, the engineers who drafted the 100$ plan in the end of 2004 / beginning of 2005, should expect the cost to be 100*1.1*1.1*1.1 or roughly 135 dollars.
That already would take a lot of sensationalism out of the story. However, let's not stop here. Remember, the real culprit behind inflation is the money supply, and consumer inflation is usually the latest to price rising party. The money supply (as you may have noticed from previous link) has been running at 14% annually, causing serious mischief in prices of things like energy (http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/energy/index.htm) or metals (http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/metals/welcome_to_the_page_about_copper_futures.htm) - both are important for making technology.
Just for the sake of an example, let's trivialize the problem a little, and say that to make a laptop you need to spend 60% of your budget on metals, and 40% on energy (it's wrong, but I am just making an example). What would you expect to happen to the price of such laptop according the charts I linked to? Well, it would go up from 100$ to slightly over 200$.

So what is the real story here, engineers screwing up their designs, or governments inflating away the buying power of the dollar making the same thing cost twice more over 3 years?
Look at my links, do your research, decide for yourself.

Never blame the market for problems that are real.

"We know that specially tailored linux distributions can run on very old (and very cheap) hardware, but Windows and OSX can't."

The OLPC has 256 MB of ram, and 1GB of flash memory. It can't run either of those operating systems. If they were trying to make it run these operating systems, they did a really poor job.

"The issue is that OLPC are pressured into running Windows by American and other rich Western schools that like the idea of buying a cheap PC and don't care that much if the price is $100 or $190 as a result."

That is speculation and it probably isn't true. I'd doubt reducing the hardware specs would make the laptop any cheaper. It just costs a certain amount to money to put a laptop together, and there's no amount of spec and feature reduction that can change that. The truth is that OLPC was largely unaware of the difficulties this kind of project would face. OLPC set an unreasonable goal for the price, and now they're coming to terms with the reality of the situation. Initially OLPC had said that the market wouldn't produce an inexpensive laptop because the profits weren't there. It turns out that the market wasn't making them because it's not possible.

Re:rehash

I'm getting paranoid too, since the quality has dropped so much in the last few years.

Notice that complaints are all getting marked down?

We're being punished for noticing.