p2pnet news | Freedom:- This month is the month you’ll be able to buy a spillproof, rainproof, dustproof, drop-proof, fanless (ie, silent) laptop weighing a trifle more than three pounds and which’ll run for six hours heavy duty, or 24 hours of reading, on one battery charge.

That was the way the New York Times described it, also pointing out it has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

It might also be cow-powered.

And all for only $200.

‘It’ is the One Laptop Per Child XO and the cow spin-off came up in a post from OLPC’s Arjun Sarwal to a discussion group.

Said the post:

We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle.

Some initial pics here
http://dev.laptop.org/~arjs/cp1.JPG
http://dev.laptop.org/~arjs/cp2.JPG

We are currently working on finalizing the mechanical and electrical design aspects.

The OLPC project was created to give poor children leading-edge laptop computers so they can communicate with each other and the world, and it recently announced a $400 two-for-one offer under which the second computer would go to needy kid.

Now, by an amazing coincidence, Walmart is selling a computer for, you guessed it, $200.

What’s the catch? It doesn’t have a monitor.

“The cheap price reflects Wal-Mart’s buying power as the world’s largest retailer and an aggressive gambit by a Taiwanese company that has carved out a niche at the low end of the computer market,” says is the Chicago Tribune, going on:

To get to $199, the company, First International Computer, had to forgo software made by Microsoft Corp. or Apple Inc. and try the little used open-source computer platform.

“There are $60 to $90 savings on every single computer sold just by getting away from the Microsoft products,” said Paul Kim, Everex’s director of marketing.

Open source software programs are developed using code that is available to anyone, typically free of charge. The most notable open-source platform is called Linux, and it has become widely used on corporate server computers.

But consumers, other than hobbyists, who use Linux and open-source software are rare.

The $99 computer

Speaking of Linux, a lack of monitors and cheap computers, why pay $200 when you can get one for $99?

“Chipzilla is doing everything it can to undercut MIT’s One Laptop Per Child project not, sadly, in the name of helping disadvantaged kids in Africa and elsewhere, but instead to pander to the God of the Bottom Line,” wrote p2pnet this June, continuing:

But it’s not the only game in town and another cheap system is quietly trundling along in the background.

For a while, AMD was offering a $185 Personal Internet Communicator (PIC) designed to, “bring Internet access to 50 percent of the world’s population by 2015″.

It came bundled with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation viewer, email, media player, and instant-messaging software and, “AMD claimed it could withstand extreme conditions like temperature and dust,” said TechTree India.

Then AMD sold it to Data Evolution who are now marketing it as the decTOP with all the Pic’s characteristics, “and more,” and at almost half the original price.

At $99, it’s still a, “high-quality, stand-alone, affordable, robust consumer device which provides an easy-to-use user experience and was developed to be highly reliable with a fully integrated, fanless, low-power computing sub-system,” promises Data Evolution.

Yes, the company is still selling them.

Meanwhile, Uruguay has put in the first official OLPC order.

It’s bought 100,000 aged six to 12, says the BBC, with a further 300,000 in the offing for, possibly, 2009.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

Slashdot it!

Also See:
New York Times - Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience, October 4, 2007
two-for-one - OLPC ‘Give One, Get One’ offer, September 24, 2007
Chicago Tribune - Wal-Mart to carry $199 computer, October 31, 2007
p2pnet - Ubuntu on a $99 computer, June 21, 2007
BBC - Uruguay buys first ‘$100 laptops’, October 29, 2007

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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