OLPC sends laptops to production, delays release
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(InfoWorld) - On Monday, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)Â 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. Right now, the OLPC prices are at $176 per laptop, with the price expected to go down to $100 sometime next year, according to a public relations spokesman for the project. There will be 3 million laptops available in October, and they will be distributed to children by the governments of participating countries, which to date include: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Greece, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Tunisia, the United States, and Uruguay. OLPC is a nonprofit project formed by Nicholas Negroponte that intends to give specially designed low-cost notebooks to children who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to purchase or use them. It is supported by several high-profile technology companies, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which is providing the laptop's processors, and Red Hat, which helped design the "Sugar" user interface. Both companies and others involved in OLPC such as Brightstar, Google, News Corp., and Nortel NetworksÂ have donated $2 million each to the project. The laptops in production are based on the XO Beta-4 (B4) engineering model, which is designed to be durable and withstand diverse and potentially harsh environmental conditions that might be found in developing countries. The display of the machine is fully readable in bright sunlight, and the machines are designed to operate even in areas where access to electricity is limited through the ability to be powered by alternative power sources such as a solar panel. Before they are released, the XO B4 laptops will go through a final round of testing by developers, hardware experts, OLPC technical volunteers, and some of the pilot schools around the world already using the B2 machines, according to the OLPC project.
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InfoWorld - The One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC) has teamed up with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to launch a pilot project in Haiti, the first time the group will be able to comprehensively evaluate the idea of giving laptops directly to students as a learning tool.
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Taiwan&#39;s Asustek Computer complained on Tuesday of a shortage of Intel central processing units (CPUs) for laptop PCs, but said it didn&#39;t expect the problem to affect its sales.&quot;The biggest shortage in notebook components is in CPUs, Intel CPUs. Intel isn&#39;t meeting demand,&quot; said Jerry Shen, president of Asustek, answering questions at an investors conference in Beitou, Taiwan.The statement highlights persistent problems laptop PC makers have faced this year in trying to procure certain parts. Strong demand for mobile computers has caused&#160;a shortage&#160;of small LCD (liquid crystal display) screens and small hard disc drives (HDD), laptop makers have complained. Therecall of around 10 million laptop batteries&#160;containing cells manufactured by Sony has also kept these vital parts in short supply since last year.Intel could not immediately be reached for comment.Back-to-school sales in September, and the run-up to the end-of-year holiday season are hot times for people to buy new laptop PCs, and hype around Microsoft&#39;s Windows Vista and&#160;Intel&#39;s Santa Rosa laptop chips&#160;has given an added spurt to demand this year. Laptop PC sales are expected to hit record highs, and some companies believe the market will grow by around 30 percent next year.Supplies of certain laptop parts could become more plentiful once the peak season ends and demand slows down.Meantime, laptop makers have had to keep up with suppliers by maintaining relationships and building inventory when they can.&quot;Our relationship with Intel is good so we don&#39;t have a big problem, but if it wasn&#39;t so good, our troubles might be worse,&quot; said Shen, of the CPU issue.Asustek forecasts it will ship between 4.2 million and 4.4 million of its own-brand laptops this year, not including its popular new Eee PC. The company has targeted shipments of up to 400,000&#160;Eee PCs&#160;this year.&#160;
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Chipzilla backs crappy AMD-based laptop You can usually gauge how thrilled Intel is with a given announcement by examining the length of its associated news release. Today, we find Intel joining the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program and managing a grand total of five paragraphs to tout the achievement.â¦
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Is Microsoft working on building a laptop for the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) program? Yes, but the intended machine will run Windows XP only, rather than both Windows XP and Linux, Microsoft officials said today.
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Continued criticism by industry insiders didn&#39;t stop vendors from OQO to Lenovo and LG from showing off ultramobile PC products with range of innovative features at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas this week.With many of the prototypes displayed due to hit the market later this year, UMPCs continue to be panned for their inconvenient keyboards, small screen sizes, and poor battery life ever, since the first UMPC from OQO was introduced at CES in 2004.OQO showed off a WiMax-capable OQO Model 2 UMPC, powered by Via Technologies&#39; C7-M mobile processors and running Windows Vista OS. It comes with hard-drive or flash-based solid-state drive options, supports up to 1GB of RAM, and has a sliding display that pops up to show a keyboard. Weighing around 1 pound (453 grams), prices start at $1,299.Eyes were locked on UMPC prototypes from companies including Lenovo and Founder at Intel&#39;s booth. The Lenovo device includes the Linux OS from Chinese developer Red Flag Software, and boasts a 4.8-inch touchscreen, an onboard camera, and other features. The Founder Mini-Note features a 7-inch screen, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, and weighs around 800 grams.Intel&#39;s prototypes are based on its Menlow platform, a code name given to a set of Intel chips for ultramobile PCs due out next year. Menlow will include a new low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, and a chip set code-named Poulsbo.One prototype that may never ship is a slider UMPC displayed in LG&#39;s booth, also based on the Menlow platform. The device runs Windows Vista, comes with a 4.8-inch screen, 1GB of memory, a 40GB hard disk drive, a touchscreen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G HSDPA cellular data. A representative at the LG booth said the company had not decided whether to market the device, as it suffered from poor battery life and keyboard usage issues.UMPCs create a design challenge by virtue of being a tweener -- neither a cell phone nor a laptop, said Phil McKinney , vice president and chief technology officer at HP&#39;s personal systems group. &quot;The UMPCs -- OQO and those guys -- are trying to be too much on the small side, very heavy, not great battery life, they get hot in your hand too when you use it. But when you get north of 9-inch screens, you&#39;re getting pretty close to a laptop,&quot; McKinney said.Screens up to 7 inches are not an appropriate scale for use of screen for touch-based applications, McKinney said.UMPCs have floundered around for a while as a killer application for mobile devices hasn&#39;t been discovered yet, McKinney said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of people coming out with products, I don&#39;t think anybody&#39;s found what the killer application or what that killer use case model really is,&quot; McKinney said.Alp Sezen, a sales director for Via Technologies based in Fremont, California, said that a reason UMPC sales have not increased dramatically, at least in the U.S., is that wireless bandwidth for mobile devices up to now has been slow.&quot;The biggest problem with ultramobile devices is they need more bandwidth. When the user experience for mobile wireless is better, that&#39;s when you will see ultramobile devices really take off,&quot; Sezen said. &quot;Right now you typically get 116K [bits per second] when you are mobile, which isn&#39;t a great user experience.&quot; A true ultramobile experience is the ability to pull out a mobile device and easily surf the Web. &quot;Right now, you can&#39;t get that experience,&quot; Sezen said.It will take a year or two for the mobile wireless experience to get better, Sezen said. &quot;WiMax, and the opening up of Verizon&#39;s EV-DO network in the third quarter this year will help give a better experience for ultramobile users.&quot;Intel has categorized UMPCs under the Mobile Internet Device (MID) nomenclature, and segments the devices further based on applications like entertainment, productivity and navigation, said Pankaj Kedia, director of the global ecosystem program for mobile Internet and UMPC platforms. The look and feel of devices, the marketing technique and what users want to buy is different, Kedia said.Clarion&#39;s UMPC, for example, will be marketed as a next-generation navigation device, Kedia said. &quot;It might have the capability of a PC under the hood, but from a user perspective it is a portable navigation mobile Internet device,&quot; Kedia said. UMPCs are more like MIDs aimed at productivity with PC capabilities inside.When asked if a prototype UMPC that Qualcomm showed off at CES would replace cell phones, company chief technology officer Sanjay Jha thought for a second and then replied: &quot;I don&#39;t know.&quot;Different people might use them in different ways, Jha said. Also, how consumers use UMPCs might depend on how successful Bluetooth becomes, he said. Some consumers might be happy to use a UMPC instead of a cell phone if they can use a Bluetooth headset to make and receive voice calls, rather than holding the larger device up to their ears, he said.Fujitsu&#39;s Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product marketing, also didn&#39;t have a definitive description of the ideal UMPC user. Someone who works on their feet a lot and is OK with typing with their thumbs might be an ideal user, he said. But he said the UMPC wouldn&#39;t necessarily replace a laptop.Terminology doesn&#39;t matter though, HP&#39;s McKinney said. &quot;Let a marketing person loose for 10 minutes and they&#39;ll come up with a category. You can say UMPC or MID, what the hell&#39;s the difference?&quot;(Nancy Gohring, Marc Ferranti, Dan Nystedt, and Martyn Williams contributed to this report).
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The One Laptop Per Child project suffered a blow this week, with Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen quitting the nonprofit to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC.Jepsen, who joined OLPC as its first employee in 2005 after Nicholas Negroponte started the effort, will pursue an opportunity to chase after &quot;her next miracle in display technology,&quot; OLPC said in an e-mail sent on Sunday.Jepsen was responsible for hardware and display development for the rugged and power-saving&#160;XO laptop, designed for use by children in developing countries. Though the laptop has struggled to find buyers, it has been praised for its innovative hardware features and environmentally friendly design.Her last day with the organization is Dec. 31, though she will continue consulting with OLPC, according to the e-mail. Dec. 31 is also the end of OLPC&#39;s Give One Get One program, in which two XO laptops can be purchased for about $400, with a user getting one laptop and the other being donated.Satisfied that XO laptops were shipping in volume, Jepsen noted in an e-mail that she was starting a for-profit company to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC.&quot;I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit,&quot; Jepsen wrote in an e-mail.&quot;I believe that the work I led in the design of the XO laptop is just the first step in changing computing,&quot; she wrote.Powered by solar power, foot pedal or pull-string, the laptop doesn&#39;t rely on an electrical outlet to run, making it useful for situations where power is unreliable or unavailable. The laptop&#39;s specially designed lithium-ferro phosphate battery consumes between 2 watts to 8 watts depending on usage, compared to 40 watts on commercial laptops depending on usage.The laptop&#39;s battery lasts up to 21 hours because of custom-designed, efficient power-saving features implemented at the hardware and software level. Batteries in commercial laptops may explode at high temperatures, while XO&#39;s batteries can run and recharge in temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), Jepsen said in earlier interview.OLPC is also designing a cow-powered generator that works by hooking cattle up to a system of belts and pulleys.For connectivity, the laptop has mesh-networking features for Internet access.
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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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(InfoWorld) - The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project is asking software coders to develop free, open-source educational computer games for the XO laptop, continuing its push toward aÂ September launch date. OLPC offered a laptop prize on Thursday for software teams who create new games during a three-day "game jam" scheduled to begin June 8 on the campus of Olin College, an engineering school in Needham, Massachusetts. By increasing the software available for the XO, OLPC hopes to encourage governments of developing countries to order more laptops, pushing the group to its sales goal of 3 million units by May 30. OLPC had collected 2.5 million orders by late April but needed to boost sales enough to order bulk computer parts and stick to the manufacturing schedule. An OLPC spokesman was sanguine about the goal, calling the date an arbitrary deadline that could also be affected by software and hardware changes as developers put the finishing touches on the beta version of the XO laptop, according to an e-mail from OLPC's public relations agency. However, production has already slipped from an original date in July and could be set back further by spiraling prices. Last month, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said the price of the "hundred-dollar laptop"Â had risen to $175. Negroponte also says that his nonprofit effort is being hurt by well-funded competition from Intel's Classmate PC, also a low-budget, power-efficient PC designed as an educational tool for children in developing countries. The game-making contest marks a new effort by OLPC to increase momentum for the XO. "The purpose of the game jam is getting people together to hack for a couple of days. Hopefully this will be the first of many," said SJ Klein, OLPC's director of content. XO users already have their choice of certain games in a "Pygames" library of open-source applications written in the Python programming language, and the XO's eToys application that allows children to create their own basic media and games, he said. But in the game jam, developers could create new types of games that rely on features of the XO's design, such as mesh networking between nearby users, an integrated still or video camera, and a tablet mode for mobile gaming. "There aren't too many games right now that take advantage of mesh style networking," said Klein, referring to the XO's ability to use Wi-Fi to communicate with other users up to a kilometer away, and display them as icons on its Sugar interface. "There are networked games, sure, but they aren't sensitive to the ability to display the presence of other users depending on where they are in relation to you or to pop up on the screen when they are close enough." Beyond creating games that teach specific tasks like counting or reading, OLPC hopes the contest will produce templates that allow kids to build their own games, according to OLPC's development guidelines. In keeping with the group's decision to use an open-source Linux OS in the XO computer, OLPC will release all games created at the weekend-long event under the open-source GNU General Public License and post them on the SourceForge site.
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According to Intel, the OLPC not only asked Intel to stop working on its own low-cost laptop projects that competed with the OLPC's XO laptop, it also asked Intel to stop supplying chips to other partners, like Asus, working on similar designs.
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InfoWorld - TheÂ One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC)Â and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday.
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OLPC America plans to combat digital divide by distributing low-cost laptops to needy students in the U.S.
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A nonprofit group that plans to produce low-cost computers for poor children has delayed production and raised the laptops' price as it works out flaws in the product, a spokesman for the foundation said on Friday.
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A nonprofit group that plans to produce  low-cost computers for poor children has delayed production and  raised the laptops&#39; price as it works out flaws in the product,  a spokesman for the foundation said on Friday.
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One Laptop per Child foundation says a production delay means fewer of its XO notebook will be available this holiday season.
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(InfoWorld) - In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel rivalÂ AMD. Previously, Intel's efforts in the education market appeared at odds with those of OLPC. While OLPC expects toÂ finally begin delayed volume shipments of its XO laptopÂ in September,Â priced at $175, Intel has been selling itsÂ Classmate PC laptopÂ in bulk since March. Classmate currently costs around $225, but Intel hopes to lower that price to $200 by year-end. Intel has been selling Classmate primarily in Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan, while OLPC has beta copies of its laptops in use by schoolchildren in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uruguay. The governments of those seven nations have pledged to purchase the XO laptops in bulk when volume shipments begin. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, has previously said publicly that Intel's Classmate efforts have been adversely affecting his project, given the well-funded nature of the chip maker's initiative. Intel and OLPC had engaged in conversations on and off for a while but nailed down an agreement to work together in the last month, according to Will Swope, vice president and director of corporate affairs at Intel. "Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?" he said. The chip maker has spent more than $1 billion in education initiatives since its founding and over the last five to six years has been investing annually around $100 million on such projects. "How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?" Swope asked. The answer, he said, was to join OLPC. "Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children,â Negroponte agreed in a statement. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will look into collaborating on both the technology and educational fronts. Intel will also join the OLPC board. In the short term, Intel will effectively be supporting two different laptop programs -- OLPC and Classmate -- which will sometimes overlap, while retaining some unique capabilities, according to Swope. It will be up to governments to decide which machine they want to buy for their schools. Over time, the two lines will become "more complementary" and Intel and OLPC will partner a lot more, he said. As yet, it's too early for Intel to provide specifics on that area of the relationship between the two organizations and product lines, Swope added. The agreement doesn't have anything to do with Intel making chips for the XO laptop, although should the contract to provide silicon for the device be up for grabs, Intel would naturally be interested, Swope said. AMD, an OLPC board member, is supplying its Geode processors for the machine. "We're definitely excited by this change of heart [by Intel] and welcome their contributions," said Rebecca Gonzales, director of marketing communications at AMD. "We're happy to have them as part of the group." AMD has long said that the technology divide that OLPC is trying to bridge with its XO laptop can't be achieved by a single entity, Gonzales added. AMD has worked closely with the other corporate members of OLPC, which include Brightstar, eBay, Google, News, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, and Red Hat. The vendor is looking forward to Intel joining the board and providing a fresh take on the project, Gonzales said. Intel isn't disclosing all the conditions of its membership in OLPC. Swope noted that a number of other IT vendors are lining up to join the project under the same terms as Intel, and OLPC doesn't want to disclose those specifics until those other companies have also become members. Intel also isn't revealing how much it's investing in OLPC and that figure may remain undisclosed, Swope said. OLPC has struggled to bring its ambitious project to fruition. Initially, the organization had hoped to begin selling its laptop at $100, but that's proved impossible given spiraling production costs. The laptop is being manufactured by Quanta with the Taiwanese vendor hoping to produce 1 million computers by year-end. Negroponte continues to vacillate on whether OLPC will also make the notebooks available outside of the developing world, for instance, to U.S. states.
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InfoWorld - Discussions are under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside a version of the&#160;One Laptop Per Child&#160;(OLPC) project&#39;s &quot;$100 laptop&quot; for children in developing countries, according to representatives from both parties.