David Pogue Reviews the XO Laptop 303
Maximum Prophet writes "David Pogue, technology reviewer at the New York Times, has taken a first-hand look at the XO laptop, also known as the 'One Laptop Per Child' project, or the '$100 Laptop'. His reaction is very favorable, having tested it out via several criteria. And ultimately, he writes, the laptop is about more than just technology for the people. 'The biggest obstacle to the XO's success is not technology -- it's 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. But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop that's 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.'"
I for one... (Score:3, Funny)
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Although to be fair I think the OLPC project is more about replacing heavy, expensive, quickly-obsoleted textbooks than anything else.
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In fact I can think of a method right now to help ILLITERATE people become literate.
But your right, these are for kids that do have a certain level of literacy.
Don't assume they'll be just be used for good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't assume they'll be just be used for good (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are you advocating that we should just cut them loose entirely? embargo the entire continent until they've managed to pull themselves up to the first world standard, just in case any aid we give them backfires on us? (yes, I am well aware that I am exaggerating for the sake of dramatics).
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Not entirely true.
Merely giving handouts takes responsibility away from the
recipient. They begin to abdicate responsibility for their
own destiny. While superficially charitable, such handouts
can prevent people from solving their own problems in a
manner much more effective than "outsiders" would.
Give a man a fish and you may end up with a dependent mooch.
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This machine has a high likelihood (if coupled with an internet connection, and that is being developed alongside the XO, IIRC) of creating blogs of starving villages. These WILL get noticed, and WILL receive charitable donations whether solicited or not from bleeding hearts. ('bleeding hearts' not meant derisively)
Put another way, I think there's a really good chance that these laptops will actually end up feeding people, very possibly more
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...whereas only good can come from giving starving people food.
nonsense. ;)
what if hitler were starving and you gave him food? hunh? hunh? what then eh?
In any large enough group of people there will be some who will commit crimes, rape, murder and such.
By preventing the starvation of the group you have given these rapists the power to continue raping.
It is the same thing.
the heart of the parent's post was that because the recipients of these laptops are poor they will be more likely to commit crimes than would be rich western kids.
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And most of the people in these countries would prefer that rich white people stopped poisoning their environment.
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Of course not. But it is, nonetheless, an issue that can get lost in OLPC "Making the world a better place" rhetoric. We shouldn't go into this with rose-colored glasses, with blind idealism.
When the very poor and uneducated encounter the world of the (relatively) educated and wealthy, it can inspire some of them to improve themselves. But, in others, it can inspire resentment and envy.
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We shouldn't go into this with rose-colored glasses, with blind idealism.
Yes, but projects like this are driven by idealism in the first place. I suppose there are differences between practical and blind idealism, but while it is important to note the possible pitfalls, it is also equally important not to lose sight of the ideal.
I hope this is not sounding evangelical already, but I believe the OLPC team (both administrative and technical sides) have considered most if not all the possible eventualities this project may encounter and decided to go ahead with it anyway.
So t
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You seem to have the negative view of human nature posed by some of old:
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I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through...
(I think I'll just bite my tongue on the porn issue for the moment)
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I love it when people take initiative to do what they think is the right thing, and then the people sitting on the sidelines are like, "Oh, you're doing it all wrong, you should do absolutely nothing like me." It really makes l
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If those kids become socially, technically, and linguistically educated enough to run the scam, I'd say the laptop is a success. The kids will have learned english gooder...
It's jaded and crappy, but how is that not a success still?
And Porn? Well,
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I've done volunteer work in 3rd world nations and the one thing we really needed was realiable, weather-proof computers with wireless communication. The first thing I thought of when I played around with an OLPC was how great the platform was for remote areas. In these environments, the standard practice is to get hand-me-down laptops from 1st world countries. These tend to vary from barely working 386-ba
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This is either a pretty good troll, or one extremely misinformed person.
The book to which this AC is referring says no such thing. In fact, it says quite the opposite. (It just says that, handled irresponsibly, there are not-so-pleasant consequences. Which shouldn't be surprising, since handling anything irresponsibly - even low-cost computers - typically has not-so-pleasant consequences). After all, isn't one of the big controversies over OLPC / XO the "fear" that the technology will be used irresponsib
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No, that's just a bunch of shills/trolls who realise this thing's good enough to make people in the developed world wonder why they're paying so much for the bloated, virus-infested crap they're saddled with.
When you see whining on the scale of the posts here, about a project with so many clear benefits, scrape a bit deeper and you'll see the usual greed and self-interest driving them.
Re:Don't assume they'll be just be used for good (Score:4, Funny)
It could be worse. They could be using MySpace.
Yo, Editors: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course there's fear. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real question becomes, then, how afraid are you? Innovation always involves fear. But it involves ridiculous rewards when you're right.
When you consider that the course of action in question involves the betterment of an entire generation of children, and quite possibly their children as well, you can't be faulted for at least trying something new. Even something untested, because face it, your old and busted way isn't working very well.
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Re: Of course there's fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be like a quantum leap for an entire generation of kids. They might take it to the next level. Punch it up a notch. Fly high. Other metaphors and similes.
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
THEY WILL LOOSE THE SALE... (Score:4, Funny)
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Can I flash the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they should even sell a proper commercial OLPC (in black perhaps) to consumers expressly for this purpose. Use the profits to subsidize the educational version.
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I got a Compaq for $350 a few weeks ago. 15" widescreen, NVidia accelerated graphics. Just over 5 pounds, feels sturdy in my hand
Re:Can I flash the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad comparison. Is you Compaq designed to take all sorts of abuse, and be able to withstand water and dust and such? How long does your Compaq run on battery? Does it have no moving parts other than the keyboard? Or is it rather fragile.
This is not designed to compete in the regular laptop market, but if they upped the keyboard to adult size it would probably work for 90+% of US citizen's real needs.
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For the average adult? Yea. I wasn't saying the XO should be replaced by a Compaq, I said for this particular user.
And yes, my two year old son spilled a cup of water on it two weeks ago. Still alive and kicking
Re:Can I flash the thing (Score:5, Informative)
- 6-24 hours(!!!) of run-time
- The XO's battery is good for 2000 charges and costs $10
- The XO has a 200 DPI daylight visible screen(!!!)
- It can run on a 1' square, $12 solar panel
- Spill-proof keyboard
Just like the article says, this laptop has many significant advantages - not just over your $350 Compaq, but over my $3000 Thinkpad. I would really like to get one of these for my 9 year old - and I have no doubt my wife and probably myself would be stealing it often!Re: (Score:2)
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The whole point is that I don't want a hulking great laptop. It's not just the weight (which is lighter), but also the volume. I don'
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- the screen is readable in daylight
- the battery lasts 24 hours in "ebook reading" mode (they power the framebuffer only, while suspending the main board)
Is there another product on the market that does this? If you reply "paper" I will smack you with a fish!
The other neat point is, it hasn't even been designed for first-world grownups to read on the beach.
Photoshop? (Score:5, Informative)
In all seriousness, though, the OLPC comes with OpenOffice and Gimp, which seem like fine alternatives to me for a bunch of African kids getting the laptop for free.
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Evidently, you have never seen one! (Score:2)
Steal away an overlooked two-billion-person market (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds like they may be defining a new marketspace that others will be free to join and compete in.
If OLPC was so good, it would be sold in US (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that the OLPCs are not offered in US toy stores even before pushing them abroad makes me suspect that they are seriously underpowered machines without much available software and are not as fun and cool as the project leaders would have us think.
Re:If OLPC was so good, it would be sold in US (Score:5, Insightful)
That's flat out moronic. It's an amazing machine.
So why not sell them in the US?
These are ingenious little machines. It would be very smart to sell them to US consumers, but frankly I think the US computer market (something that includes me) tends to be... on average... far too ignorant to be able to buy these effectively. They will consider them all broken because they aren't "normal" computers.
All this is ignoring the fact the whole point of this project is to help 3rd world people, not give Americans another way to IM their friends.
They aren't underpowered, they have plenty of power. You don't NEED a dual CPU 2.x GHz laptop with 2 gigs of RAM to compute. This think would kick my Mac LC II around the block so bad it wouldn't be funny.
Sell them as (Score:4, Informative)
Once the kids friends realize how much power they will have, they all will want one. By the time the parents realize what's up it will be to late.
Re:If OLPC was so good, it would be sold in US (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't designed as toys. They are designed as educational tools to be used in an environment where they interact with others with similar hardware, school servers, etc., and to support centralized distribution of software and content by the agency purchasing them.
I also don't think you understand the marketing costs and risk associated with a mass retail marketing effort, particular of a product which is designed for the specific needs of a very different one than you are trying to market it to at retail.
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I'ld like to add that they need to produce millions of near identical computers to get the economy of scale to produce it at $150-200 cost.
I'll add that it would help if the laptops were produced in the country if not the region that buys them. One nation mentioned as buying or having an interest in buying the XO is Brazil. If OLPC were to open a factory in Brazil to build them n ot only would it benefit education in Brazil but it would create jobs there too. They might not last long but the skills ga
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You make it sound more complicated than it is. In simple terms: nobody wants to spend a lot of money trying to market a cheap computer that isn't really designed for the U.S. market. Even if Americans wanted to buy it, there's no hope of making any money selling i
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I don't think "the U.S. market" is the thing that it is not designed for that makes the big difference. Sure, sure, its environment-proof in many ways to meet needs of the developing world, but that kind of kid-proofing isn't far from the needs o
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American children already have well funded, well equipped, and well staffed (all relative to third world countries, mind you) school systems. Thus, the purpose of a computer in an American school is often less for the purpose of education in general than for educat
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If instead this is a gimmick that nobody would use if they can afford a real laptop, project leaders should just come out and say so honestly.
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If OLPC succeeds, maybe people in the US will start questioning why they can't bring computers to scouting trips, or why $3000 worth of engineering in a laptop didn't add another $3 of sturdier plastic that would have prevented it from shattering after a fall of only 3ft.
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The OLPC project's primary interest is helping children in the poorest parts of the world. I expect that providing US children with an inexpensive toy is pretty low on their list of goals.
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Your purchase will also subsidize the free ones for poor countries.
google for 'purchase olpc'
I got to see one in person at the Ottawa Linux Symposium and I'm planning on buying one.
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Here is a better URL:
http://www.xogiving.org/ [xogiving.org]
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Cheers.
A child?? I must have turn the logo the wrong way (Score:5, Funny)
90 degrees in which direction? If you turn it the other way it looks like a skull and crossbones.
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Re:A child?? I must have turn the logo the wrong w (Score:2)
Or maybe John Madden was trying out as spokesman and had too much fun with the telestrator
tradeoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite some of my reservations (some of them in common with Pogue) I really hope that this "little laptop that could" becomes widely adopted. If it is, it will be game changing on so many levels. It is so much more than a teaching tool. Not only will it redefine who gets to participate in the market of ideas, it will change the pricing for laptop prices across the board. Perhaps even quicken the convergence between cell phones, PDAs, laptops, and other media centers. The little device is just wicked cool.
However, there are some darker sides to it. Online addiction [bbc.co.uk] is epidemic in China. Also, if the OLPC is actually successful, some suggest that their owners would man a CAPTCHA solving army [olpcnews.com].
In the end, I think these risks are worth the benefits. And wide adoption is the least of the project's worries. It seems as if adoption is taking off a little too slowly.
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Less is More? (Score:3, Insightful)
More and more, after years of Windows, then a Mac, then dabbling with various Linux distros, I find myself questioning just how much of the junk on my computers is essential or even useful.
Less moving parts, simpler and fewer applications, and limited capabilities, all sound like positives, not negatives, if only because it could slow the endless stream of updates and fixes, each of which seems to introduce other problems.
I can see an OLPC machine as really good daily machine for e-mail, browsing, and some everyday tasks like word processing, at least with a bigger hard drive. With the option of maintaining a desktop PC, even a generation older, to handle the heavy lifting of Adobe and similar tools, I could probably get by nicely with this little unit.
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It's a matter of perspective, I guess (Score:2)
FTFA:
The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.
It looks more like the symbol on poison labels and pirate ships, if you ask me.
It's called the "Web", guys (Score:5, Insightful)
'Cause there's no way that you could possibly use one of these things to learn about sustainable agriculture [wikipedia.org], malaria prevention [cdc.gov], or safe drinking water [who.int], right?
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My god .... somebody on Slashdot GETS it. My brain is going to explode.
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Yes, you could theoretically use that to learn about those things. But computers don't bring in resources that aren't currently in a geographic location. Those are protected by people with guns. That's what people often forget: education is great and all, but without hard physical resources that education is useless.
I'm all for education, but these people need education and resources. In fact, most people will tell you that having more resources makes it simpler to learn, because less time is spent tryin
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And without education, hard physical resources are equally useless. Did it occur to you that maybe *both* are a good thing? That there could be multiple *complimentary* efforts?
It's gotta be better (Score:2)
Oh- wait, Adam Osborne was from Thailand.....
looks like a child? (Score:2)
What "need" does this fulfill? (Score:2)
Re:What "need" does this fulfill? (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe it was Duke Ellington who, when asked what Jazz is, famously said, "Man, if you gotta ask, you ain't never gonna know."
(And while we're at it: You are aware that the majority of the developing world is not in Africa, I hope?)
If you don't get why improved access to information is a fundamental prerequisite for development, then the XO will always look like wings on a fish. If, however, you can accept the premise that inadequate communications is one of the biggest stumbling blocks we face when trying to perform any kind of development work, then you will quickly see why people are so excited about this project.
I met a young doctor yesterday whose initial reaction was almost exactly the same as yours. She's dedicated to health education in the developing world, and she's very good at what she does. When she first read about the work we've been doing in the South Pacific, she immediately scoffed and insisted that we should try getting a steady supply of antibiotics and anti-malarials first. But just last week as she was conducting a walking tour of one of the poorest areas in the country, she realised what she could achieve if most or all of the children there had these laptops. She's since signed on to our national OLPC project as a content developer.
Solving communications is a necessary - but not sufficient - element of development. The XO doesn't remove the need for vast amounts of material aid, but it makes it so much easier for development projects to actually succeed.
An alternative (Score:2)
It comes with a video player, audio player, web browser (it does WiFi, BlueTooth, and USB), email, chat, PDF reader, wordpad (HTML instead of RTF), games like chess, mahjong. There are a bunch of apps that can be downloaded f
120 Euro laptop? (Score:3, Funny)
Sold. (Score:2)
Okay. Seen reviews of the software, the hardware and the man behind the project. I'll pay 300-400 dollars for one Right The Hell Now. So where do I get one?
Triv
I, for one, welcome our XO overlords (Score:2)
And to all the damn naysayers out there... Information is Power. Even a little bit helps a
Give 1, Get 1 - Great but Dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
There will be plenty of takers for the foreseeable future. The program caters to peoples vanity, allowing the giver to flaunt their generosity. Nothing appeals more to the western world than gadgets and vanity, and if our obsessions can fuel third world education, then that would be the best thing since sliced bread.
Governments could also benefits from a relatively low-cost rugged PC. Try to get a reasonably equipped, rugged piece of hardware for $400. You can't.
However, the laptops for sale should be of a different colour, for instance red. This would alleviate one of the biggest concerns of the program --- that stolen green laptops became a major source of revenue to corrupt government officials, or to parents who found a few dollars more tempting than their child's education. The goods will eventually end up in the hand of westerners who act like Santa Claus but are actually stealing from the kids --- a disturbing thought.
Selling the standard green laptop is a gigantic mistake. By all means keep the production line the same, but please change (at least) the colour of the enclosure for the resale variant. Help keep the green XO in the hands of its intended users.
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So I suppose that means we can't afford to have this effort go too well. I mean, if the smug gets any thicker in America, we may soon be unable to see through it! (this is a SouthPark reference, of course)
Ebook Reader (Score:2)
The screen looks big enough to read a lot of text, turn the display to B&W, buy cheap batteries, run with a solar panel, and by buying one are helping children in a developing country.
BTW - if you find the NYT video slow, its on YouTube as well.
I've got a great eBook reader. (Score:2)
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Most dedicated eBook readers are bigger than a hardcover, far too big to slip into your pocket. And my Clie has at least the same resolution as the good eBook readers I've seen, it just has a smaller screen... about half the size of a page of a paperback.
IMO, most PDA's don't make good e-Book readers.
IMO, most eBook readers don't make as good eBook readers as PDAs do. Being able to fit into my pocket is for me a non-
I'll be Buying and USING the XO (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll be picking up at least one of these machines -- well, two, since if I buy one for $400, they send another one to a kid somewhere who needs it.
I hope the distribution isn't limited to third-world countries; there are some poor areas right here in the U.S. that could use these machines. Certain Indian reservations come to mind...
I need a computer with decent outdoor screen and great battery life, one that's cheap enough I can afford to let it sink into a swamp without diving in and fighting the alligators and leeches for it (I do wildlife research in Florida). This machine may be just the ticket.
That mesh network thing is too cool. (Score:2, Insightful)
And of course.. (Score:2)
Re:first tits! (Score:4, Interesting)
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yeah (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:first tits! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:first tits! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Prudishness is an american problem. And here viewing pr0n can be argued to have educational value more important than math.
who cares about hardware, when... (Score:2)
"...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.)"
This makes these things the coolest thing ever! Every application is fully customizable. That's software freedom at it's most beautiful.
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Because barefoot, illiterate, sick, starving people should never be given anything that might make them less illiterate (and thus, eventually, less barefoot, sick and starving).
The XO is a way for teachers to stay in touch with illiterate parents. The XO is textbooks that won't be burnt for heat. The XO is exposure to the same kind of ability to learn valuable skills that first-world children have been enjoying for decades. The XO is
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Maybe *you* should leave your air-conditioned apartment in Leblon or Morumbi and learn first-hand what poor people really need.
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The XO is a step in the right direction to improve education by providing the ability to make available vast amounts of information to students that normally wouldn't have the opportunity because of their birth location.
You are short sighted. (Score:2)
"No where on the lists is the fastest Comcast download speed, a cool car, or any of the other techno-pushed bullshit that people think is important."
oh really?
Lets see:
Being online allows one to communicate with LOVED one. -- Love
It gives a person options to improve you FAMILIES lives. --
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> I still don't agree or possibly don't fully understand the
> mentality behind a push to get laptops into the hands of
> children in poor countries. I see it as folly, and missing
> the point of what people really want.
Coming from someone who owns a laptop?
--Richard
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I can show you (and so can Google) internet retailers selling 1W panels for $10-12 that are about 1/2sq ft. Buy in bulk and leave out a profit and ya, you can buy 2W (the stated power needed to run an OLPC) for $12.