Former OLPC CTO predicts a $75 laptop by 2010
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InfoWorld - Mary Lou Jepsen stirred up a controversy when she left the struggling One Laptop Per Child nonprofit effort in December to start her own for-profit company, Pixel Qi, with the goal to create a $75 laptop using technologies she invented at OLPC.
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And sells 100,000 units to Uruguay The $100 laptop, designed to save the children of developing countries from a world without technology, might have to be rebranded. The machine's price tag has now hit the $200 mark.â¦
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In which our correspondent endures great travail in search of a sub-$300 laptop. In Gear Factor.
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Intel&#39;s resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors will have &quot;no impact&quot; on the group&#39;s operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.&quot;We never really got much going with Intel to have an impact,&quot; Bender said.Intel joined OLPC&#39;s board of directors&#160;in July as part of an agreement that seemed to bury the hatchet between OLPC and&#160;Intel&#39;s competing Classmate PC&#160;project. In addition to ending a war of words between Intel and OLPC, the two sides agreed to cooperate on technology development. Work also began on the development of a version of&#160;OLPC&#39;s XO laptop&#160;using an Intel processor instead of the AMD chip found in the current version.But the partnership agreement ultimately yielded little, and Intel made a &quot;seemingly half-hearted effort&quot; to build a version of the XO based on one of its microprocessors, Bender said.The development of&#160;an XO laptop based on an Intel processor&#160;was widely believed to rely on a version of Intel&#39;s upcoming Silverthorne processor, due out early this year. But the use of Silverthorne, billed by Intel as an inexpensive and power-efficient processor, was never confirmed by either Intel or OLPC, although Intel employees privately hinted at its use.Regardless of which chip was actually used in Intel&#39;s development efforts, the prototype laptop didn&#39;t live up to OLPC&#39;s expectations. &quot;They developed something that, as far as I know, is more expensive and more power-hungry than our current offering, so I&#39;m not quite sure what the point is,&quot; Bender said.Bender&#39;s comments underscore the mutual nature of Intel&#39;s decision to quit OLPC, but he also hinted at missed opportunities.&quot;My expectation was that there&#39;s lots of room for cooperation, particularly on software ... [but] I couldn&#39;t get Intel interested in helping me with any of those problems,&quot; Bender said, adding Intel executives seemed most interested in using the agreement with OLPC for marketing purposes and public relations.&quot;The only thing they were interested in was ... helping them make marketing statements about how Intel&#39;s approach to learning was different from OLPC&#39;s approach to learning,&quot; Bender said. &quot;They weren&#39;t interested in how we can learn together and make something better for kids.&quot;For Intel&#39;s part, a source familiar with the company&#39;s decision to resign from the OLPC board said repeated requests to abandon the Classmate PC in favor of support for the OLPC&#39;s XO played a major role. Intel has invested heavily in Classmate PC, which is currently being tested in several countries, and the company did not want to walk away from those efforts, the source said.During the six months that Intel belonged to OLPC, the chip maker contributed around $6 million to the project, the source said, estimating that Intel spent around $100 million on education-related projects last year.Bender declined to comment on Intel&#39;s financial contributions to the project.&#160;
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com December 15, 2004, 2:07 PM PT. Sales of new and used PCs running the Linux operating system will reach $10 billion by 2008, market researcher IDC predicted Wednesday.
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The One Laptop Per Child Project would welcome Intel back if the chip maker returned to the group, the head of OLPC said Tuesday.The statement came just days after&#160;Intel quit the group&#39;s board of directors&#160;over what it said was OLPC&#39;s insistence that it abandon a rival low-cost laptop developed by Intel, the Classmate PC. OLPC has said it asked no such thing of Intel, and that it welcomes the Classmate PC because the more low-cost laptops there are available, the more likely they&#39;ll get into the hands of children in the developing world.&quot;It was very unfortunate what happened with Intel and I hope there&#39;s a way of rebuilding it in the future because there&#39;s&#160;no interest in OLPC pushing Intel out. It just is not in our interest. Our goal is to get this to as many children as possible,&quot; said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview.He called it unfortunate that Intel made statements that OLPC asked the chip maker to stop working on the Classmate PC. &quot;The picture that painted was one of OLPC being anti-competition, which is ridiculous. We&#39;d like to see as many laptops out there as possible and kids have the widest choice possible,&quot; he said.Intel would be willing to talk with OLPC, said Agnes Kwan, an Intel manager. But she added that the organizational break-up came about because of differences that the groups have been so far unable to resolve.The OLPC Project started as an attempt to build a $100 laptop aimed at kids in poor nations, but the laptop from the group, the XO, will likely end up costing nearly double that amount, initially. The organizers of the effort, led by academics and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), hope heavy volume sales of the laptops will drive down costs.The goal of OLPC is to make sure nobody misses out on the benefits of computing. The fear is that the price of a PC is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how the software, Internet and communications benefits of computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives, or that poor countries will fall further and further behind the modern world due to their inability to access computers, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.&#160;
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Ross Mayfield has an interesting take on the Lenovo/IBM deal and bringing open source to the desktop in his blog... I believe their commoditization strategy is more than hardware.
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Blog: The No. 2 PC seller will offer a $899 desktop, a $599 desktop and a $599 laptop with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled.
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Will the company's next PC look like a Christmas tree? A patent filing sheds some light.
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Upcoming chips will lead to relatively inexpensive hardware, company says.
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IBM lost the 1980s. But the big payoff may be still to come.
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The popular "give one, get one" program in which U.S. buyers paying $400 both received their own XO "One Laptop per Child" unit and donated one to a needy kid internationally may be extended to Europe in 2008, OLPC president Walter Bender says.
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Intel resigned from the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors&#160;after refusing a request to abandon its Classmate PC program, according to a source familiar with the situation.Intel&#39;s departure from OLPC&#39;s board means that an effort to build a version of the project&#39;s XO laptop based on an Intel processor is over, the source said.Intel&#39;s Classmate PC is a low-cost laptop designed for students in developing countries and competes against OLPC&#39;s XO laptop, which is based on a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Intel and OLPC agreed in July to work together on the development of technology for low-cost laptops and to stop disparaging each other&#39;s laptop offerings.As part of that agreement, Intel got a seat on OLPC&#39;s board of directors and the two sides began to discuss building a version of the XO based on an Intel processor. At the same time, OLPC also explored the possibility of using an Arm processor from Marvell in yet another version of the XO.But during discussions in the months following the July deal, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte insisted that Intel abandon the Classmate PC effort in favor of throwing its support behind OLPC&#39;s XO device, the source said. But the Classmate PC is undergoing tests in several countries and Intel was not prepared to walk away from those efforts, according to the source.Intel spokesman Nick Jacobs confirmed that the company and OLPC had parted ways, but declined to comment further on the matter. Negroponte and other OLPC executives could not immediately be reached for comment.OLPC has struggled to win orders for the XO laptop. A rising price tag -- now close to US$200, instead of $100 as originally planned -- hasn&#39;t helped the group make inroads with cash-strapped governments in developing countries.
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Europeans interested in the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s XO laptop may soon have the chance through a &quot;give one, get one&quot; offer similar to that offered in North America last year.&quot;At some point we might do it in Europe,&quot; said Walter Bender, OLPC&#39;s president, in an interview Friday.Under the &quot;give one, get one&quot; program offered in Canada and the U.S., customers could buy an XO laptop for US$400 and a second XO laptop would be donated to a developing country. Each XO laptop currently costs around $188.OLPC hasn&#39;t yet made the offer available in Europe because the XO has not received the necessary certifications to be sold there. &quot;We haven&#39;t finished all that stuff, so we couldn&#39;t do it in Europe yet,&quot; Bender said.Whether or not OLPC does make the XO available in Europe remains to be determined, and such an offer remains under consideration. &quot;We may or may not do it,&quot; Bender saidFrom OLPC&#39;s perspective, the &quot;give one, get one&quot; offer helped large numbers of people in North America get involved with the group&#39;s efforts to bring computing to children in developing countries, Bender said.&quot;A lot of people [are] jumping in to the software, to learning and to support. ...That&#39;s what I was hoping Intel would do, but they didn&#39;t. The public is doing it instead,&quot; he said, referring to&#160;Intel&#39;s acrimonious departure&#160;last week from OLPC&#39;s board of directors.OLPC has so far shipped around 50,000 XO laptops to North American customers under the &quot;give one, get one&quot; program, and more remain to be shipped, Bender said. The number of customers who ordered laptops under the program was not immediately available, but as many as 150,000 units may have been donated through the program.&#160;
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Iâve recently been thinking about picking up a new laptop computer and handing off my Compaq (which has worked great over the past 3 years) to my wife for her excursion into the travel industry.
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InfoWorld - A laptop under $100 could reach desks if a new venture formed by the formerÂ CTO of One Laptop Per Child, Mary Lou Jepsen, can deliver on its promises.
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InfoWorld - On Monday, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)&#160;moved a step closer to providing low-cost laptops to children in developing nations by giving the go-ahead to the mass production of its XO laptop. However, the computers are expected to be out in October, one month later than originally planned.