OLPC's XO-1.75 Laptop To Have a Multitouch Screen

angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child has revealed it is adding a multitouch screen to the upcoming XO-1.75 laptop and is modifying software to take advantage of the new hardware. The XO-1.75 with a touch-sensitive 8.9-inch screen will start shipping next year. The laptop will run on an Arm processor and is the successor to the current XO-1.5 laptop, which runs on a Via x86 processor. OLPC will also add a multitouch screen on the next-generation XO-3 tablet, which is due to ship in 2012. Fedora will continue to be the base Linux distribution for XO-1.75 as the laptop changes from the x86 to Arm architecture."

Re:How many

[Darkness404]

According to various sources, 1,494,500. While that is a bit low when considering the 3 year span, it still is a pretty large number of kids who wouldn't have gotten any shot at technology otherwise.

Error in the summary/title/etc; RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The title and summary of the story contradict themselves.

Title: "OLPC's XO-1.75 Laptop To Have a Multitouch Screen"

Summary: "OLPC will also add a multitouch screen on the next-generation XO-3 tablet"

The title is wrong; the summary is correct. Multitouch in XO-3. XO-1.75 will only have a touchscreen. Way to edit. I'm sorry for RTFA, I'm new here, won't happen again.

Re:Patent Problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth the Wall Street Journal [wsj.com]:

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Re:Patent Problems?

[tlhIngan]

I'd love to get a reliable source on that. I always imagine Apple as being evil as sin (ha!); it would do a lot for my impression of the company to believe that they were willing to work on something for nothing (OS X + PostScript GUI on a 433mhz Geode?).

This might be the best source WSJ [wsj.com]
Quote:

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

As for OS X on a 433MHz X86 compatible - "OS X" seems to run just fine on an iPhone/iPod Touch which have 400MHz ARM processors. Sure it's not the full OS, but it can be cut down to run decently. I think OLPC could've cut out the fat and made it run decently...

Re:Let them eat laptops!

[cgenman]

E) Durable as hell. I challenge anyone to find a $200 netbook that is waterproof, let alone one that can be dropped from 7 or 8 feet repeatedly without worrying about if it will survive. F) Grid networking. Instead of crowding around a single access point that might not be in reach, a school full of OLPC's can piggyback on eachother's signals to get much further than otherwise possible.

And let's not forget that the XO project is partially responsible for the existence of netbooks. Intel and Microsoft both made reference netbook platforms in response to the perceived threat of OLPC platform. (politics, someone else can jump in with the sordid history, I'm sure). Basically, when it was announced a $100 (cough $200) laptop was considered ludicrous, and a lot of effort went into making viable platforms. Now, netbooks are almost an impulse buy.

The keyboard's pretty terrible, but other than that the OLPC is a surprisingly well designed platform for the environment it finds itself in.

Re:Let them eat laptops!

[EETech1]

That's why they are activated by the school server, and secured by Bitfrost. If a non G1G1 XO ends up on EBay, it will not function.

Re:Let them eat laptops!

[cgenman]

G) Passively cooled with no moving parts. Try wandering around Best Buy throwing sand into off-the-shelf laptops and see how long before you're thrown out with a huge repair bill.

Re:Patent Problems?

[mcvos]

Note that Apple granting OLPC a free license to use multi-touch doesn't mean everybody else can use it for free too.

Re:All The Cool features?

[cgenman]

Mesh networking works great.

As far as I know, the solar panel thing was experimented with, but not produced.

I had a friend at Red Hat who worked on the software for the OLPC. His version had a hand crank. For very real, very important durability reasons it was removed.

Windows is an option, though the default is still Sugar / Linux. I don't know numbers on how many of what have shipped.

1.5 million have shipped, mostly to South America and parts of Africa.

OLPC is still full of engineers out to help the developing world.

Re:Let them eat laptops!

[gmuslera]

Can't say that the experience in my country has been a wild success, but still things has changed since most school children here in Uruguay got their XO, and not just for the children.

And if well it went for children for most social classes (they were deployed in all public schools, so some private schools didnt got them) somewhat chokes you to see poor children on the streets playing with them or browsing internet close to places with free wifi.

Re:Where can they be bought?

[naz404]

They can't normally be bought except in large government-level quantities, but if you want to get your hands on one for testing, you can apply for the contributors' program. Basically you submit a project proposal on how you're going to use the units, and it's kinda like a grant except they send you laptop units.

You can volunteer as a developer and if you submit a good project proposal, there's a good chance of being sent some units.

You can check it out and apply here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program [laptop.org]

Re:Let them eat laptops!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool. The names are to do with positions in the cold war. The first world was the West, and allies/empire, the second world was the Soviet Union, China, and allies/empire, the third world was neutral and often less developed countries. Third world is used as a name these days for the countries on the bottom of the economic pile, as since the end of the Soviet Union the terms 1st and 2nd world have become obsolete.

But your creation of Old World, New World and Thirld (sic) World is nice and funny. A sign of a someone truly raised by TV! The old world refers to the known world before Columbus found the Americas, and I'll let you figure out the rest.

Re:Patent Problems?

[TheRaven64]

Yup, Os X could easily have run on the chips. Desktop OS X ran quite happily on 433MHz PowerPC chips, and a cut-down version would not have had problems on a mobile version (same kernel, trim some of the userspace stuff).

They did not, as you assert, ship Windows. They made sure that the hardware worked with Windows, because some customers wanted it, but they ship Linux. They just don't prevent you from installing Windows. Sugar is cross-platform and can run under Windows, but OLCP uses it under Linux.

The decision to use a fully open stack was both idealistic and pragmatic. One of the requirements of the OLPC project was that they should not be the only supplier. It was intended to help bootstrap a technological industry in the countries that opted in, and one of the stages in this was that they should be able to take over production of the units themselves. The specifications and software stack for the entire unit are available royalty free, so any country with the required manufacturing capability can modify the system in any way that they want, based on their own usage requirements, and start producing the newer versions (or get some foreign company to do the bits that they can't do locally yet).