OLPC reports incorrect
p2pnet.net News:- Damn! Reports that One Laptop per Child (OLPC) computers are going to be generally available are wrong.
We home school our daughter, Emma, and an OLPC laptop would have been perfect. Right now, she’s using a machine running Microsoft stuff. I’d love to be able to afford a new Linux box, but I don’t have the money.
OLPC backers, “plan to release the machine on general sale next year,” says the BBC. “But customers will have to buy two laptops at once – with the second going to the developing world.”
“Get one for the kids? I’ll get one for myself =),” said a p2pnet reader. “I wonder if they will they be taking advance orders.”
Sadly, the Beeb, and other, reports are erroneous.
Contrary to previously published reports, “OLPC has no plans to make the XO laptops available for sale to the general public,” says a press statement.
“OLPC’s focus is getting XO laptops into the hands of children in developing nations. Currently, official OLPC launch countries include Libya, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uruguay.”
And a statement from OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte says:
“One Laptop per Child is not planning a consumer version of its current XO laptop, designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world.
“XO will be made available to governments in very large quantities to be given to all children free, as part of the education system. Many commercial ventures have been considered and proposed that may surface in 2008 or beyond, one of which is ‘buy 2 and get 1.’
“In addition, OLPC is launching OLPC Foundation later this month, specifically to accommodate the huge goodwill and charity that has surfaced around the idea of a $100 laptop’.”
And it was such a good idea.
JN
Also See:
generally available – OLPC laptops on general sale, January 13, 2007
BBC – $100 laptop could sell to public, January 9, 2006
press statement – One Laptop per Child Has No Plans to Commercialize XO Computer, January 13, 2007
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January 14th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
i Will still donate money to for this charity even if it means I will not have a laptop myself. I believe that this charity organization is honestly a great way to bring techonology throughout the world, and it honestly shows the greed of large scale corporations in their protest of how they dislike such an idea of a laptop for $100. If a laptop was ever sold to the general public at such a low price then obviously it would have lacked certain important details that the more expensive models would have had, because there is a lack of full compettion the prices are at the thousands if not two thousands and yet they dont always work correctly as promised or as needed.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 am
You will be able to run the same software (Sugar) on your current PC. You can also run linux on your current PC, replacing MS Windows with software libre.