Mary Lou Jepsen—the XO Laptop’s designer and OLPC’s CTO before defecting and founding Pixel Qi—has even grander ambitions for new laptop project than hitting a mythical $US75 pricetag. Pixel Qi is working on a laptop will be able to run on a standard for 20 to 40 hours, no pixie dust required.
I know I’d want a velociraptor more than a funny-lookin’ little computer. Other things per child we’d like to give kids in developing countries:
One of the OLPC’s few successes—besides arguably sparking the whole netbook movement—was its Give 1, Get 1 program. Okay, it had some issues, but overall, the program was a success in getting the laptops out there. No surprise then that it’s coming back on Nov. 17, though this time they’ll be wisely letting Amazon take care of the logistics. [OLPC - Thanks Jimmie!]
Today the government of Peru, Microsoft and the OLPC announced the first official pilot of XO laptops running Microsoft Windows. This was expected of course, but it marks the beginning of a major shift away from Sugar / Linux—although both will remain as dual boot options for the foreseeable future. It also represents a major step for Microsoft who stand to gain a strong foothold in the developing world.
From November you’ll be able to buy the OLPC in its classic “buy one for the price of two” offer from Amazon, which should be a smoother way of distributing the device than when the OLPC was originally on sale from the source. This new Give 1 Get 1 program will also cover the Windows XP version, now that Microsoft have finalised it, as well as the Sugar OS version. One thing remains unknown: pricing. The previous G1G1 program went to US residents for US$398, but maybe this time it’ll be a little closer to the fabled US$100 price tag. [Electronista and BBC]
In November of 2005, Nicholas Negroponte and his OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen travelled to Tunisia for the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, where they were able to present a “working” US$100 laptop concept to Kofi Annan, UN secretary general. No longer did the machine rely on that pop-up rear-projection display; it was smaller, made of green plastic, and had a crank for the kids to work—for 10 straight minutes per hour of use—when they had no other access to electricity. It was a vast improvement over that January’s pup-tent rear-projection laptop, hampered only by the fact that it was an absolute fake.
When news of the Classmate tablet broke yesterday, it was hard to know what to think. In terms of specs, the devices is a far sight better that the Classmate 2.0, but aside from the new tablet form factor, the diminutive netbook didn’t seem to include any truly innovative new features. During the Intel Developer Forum today I got to fold around with the new Classmate, and my suspicions were confirmed: barring a late-stage killer feature, this iteration of Intel’s OLPC killer will be sort of lame.
