p2pnet - rss feed: Will 2007 be the year for XO?
p2pnet.net News:- XO is the short name for the One Laptop Per Child laptop computer, a 2006 PopSci Grand Award winner, and PopSci had this to say about it:
The goal of the XO is simple and noble: to give every child a laptop, especially in developing countries, where the machines will be sold in bulk for about $130 apiece. But the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit, formed at MIT, didn’t just create a cheap computer. In addition to cutting costs—by designing lower-priced circuitry and using an open-source operating system, among other things—it also improved on the standard laptop by slashing the machine’s energy use by 90 percent, ideal for a device that could be charged by hand-cranked power in rural villages. The biggest power hog is typically the display, so engineers invented a new LCD. Each pixel has one part that reflects light and one that lets light pass through a colored filter. Turn on the LED behind the screen, and a full-color image appears as rays stream through the tinted filters. Turn it off to save power, and light bounces off the reflective parts of the pixels to form a black-and-white image perfect for e-mail or e-textbooks. Even more efficient, the CPU suspends itself when the image is static. Expect the tech in full-price laptops in a few years.
Because ‘X’ marks the spot for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project designed to bring the power of the Net to children in developing countries around the world with the first batch scheduled for shipment in July.
It’s an anathema for the likes of Microsoft and Intel, neither of whom wants any part of it and both of whom have dismissed it out of hand.
But it’ll give a lot of children their first look at a non-commercialized way of both connecting to the world, and talking each other, p2p, person-to-person, learning in the process
When the project was launched in 2005, the aim was to turn out laptops at $100 each. The cost is now around $150, still a fortune in many parts of the world, but a far cry from the glitzed up, high-priced systems which are standard fair on consumer markets, but beyond the reach of most ordinary people.
“Forget windows, folders and boxes that pop up with text,” says The Associated Press. “When students in Thailand, Libya and other developing countries get their $150 computers from the One Laptop Per Child project in 2007, their experience will be unlike anything on standard PCs.
“For most of these children the XO machine, as it’s called, likely will be the first computer they’ve ever used. Because the students have no expectations for what PCs should be like, the laptop’s creators started from scratch in designing a user interface they figured would be intuitive for children.”
XO is Linux powered and runs on a 366-megahertz processor from Advanced Micro Devices. It has 512 mb of flash memory instead of a hard drive, nd has USB 2.0 ports so more storage can be attached.
“But the main design motive was the project’s goal of stimulating education better than previous computer endeavours have,” says AP, quoting Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab and then turned it into a separate non-profit, as saying he deliberately wanted to avoid giving children computers, “they might someday use in an office”.
Go here for more on the hardware, and here for the software.
Stay tuned.
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Also See:
The Associated Press - Low-cost laptop could transform learning for students, January 2, 2007
