OLPC to offer consumers $400 two-laptop bundle
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One for you, one for them The group behind the third-world oriented $100 (ish) laptop will also offer consumers in developed countries the chance to buy its machine later this year.â¦
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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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NEW YORK: The world&#39;s biggest retailer Wal-Mart is offering price-conscious US consumers the cheapest laptop on the market, priced at just US$498, in a move described by some analysts as a &quot;significant milestone.
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The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project is asking software coders to develop free, open-source educational computer games for the XO laptop, continuing its push toward a September launch date.
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This story began in August, when I responded to a "one weekend only" sale of a laptop computer with "free wireless router, Internet security suite, and all-in-one printer, scanner, and copier" after a $300 mail-in rebate.
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Both business travelers and kids in remote villages in developing nations need cheap, small, rugged and power-stingy laptops. So does the OLPC XO laptop work for business users?
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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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Microsoft Corp. will sell "affordable" Windows computers aimed at students in India, but the $500 price tag is more than what US consumers might pay for a basic laptop.
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Adding Windows XP&#160;to Asustek Computer&#39;s Eee PC will double the price of the low-cost laptop compared to existing versions running Linux.The company will sell a version of the Eee PC with Windows XP in mature markets such as the U.S. and Europe for around US$1,000, while a configuration aimed at emerging market nations will cost about $500, said Jerry Shen, president of Asustek, during an investors conference Tuesday in Beitou, Taiwan.XP-based Eee PCs are expected to be available by the end of this year.The Eee PC is a low-cost laptop&#160;designed for children and emerging markets that weighs less than one kilogram, has a 7-inch LCD screen, and can connect to the Internet wirelessly. Asustek officially put the first version of the Eee PC, costing around NT$11,100 (US$340), on&#160;sale earlier this month&#160;in Taiwan. It runs a Linux OS from Xandros.The laptop PC will soon reach the U.S. and Europe.Asustek plans to launch the Linux-based Eee PC on Nov. 1 at retail stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, and Toronto, and also through e-commerce Web sites in North America.On Nov. 9, the company will hold a launch ceremony in Germany, the first country in Europe to get its hands on the low-cost laptop.The company will launch the Eee PC in major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, in mid-November.Asustek has shipped 100,000 Eee PCs so far this month to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand, said Shen, and he is targeting 400,000 units by the end of this year.Next year, Asustek forecasts it will ship 3.8 million Eee PCs.&quot;We&#39;re in talks with a few governments and we have already confirmed orders for one million units next year,&quot; said Sunny Han, global marketing director at the company.Asustek also reaffirmed its commitment to pushing the cost of the Eee PC down to US$199, nearly the same as the XO laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project. OLPC is pricing the laptops at $200 according to its Givemany and Laptopgiving donor programs.One of the biggest costs for the Eee PC is taxes, said Shen. VAT (value added tax) and other taxes have a big impact on price. Governments interested in buying Eee PCs for education could get a better price by waiving such taxes, he said. An Eee PC sold to a government without taxes factored in would cost around $199, while the price goes up to about $300 with the taxes factored in.The configuration of the laptops also affects the price, with the amount of flash memory and DRAM (dynamic RAM), the camera and battery having the biggest influence, he said. The price of the kind of flash memory Asustek is using for data storage in the Eee PCs has gone up recently.Earlier this month, Asustek announced four Eee PC laptop configurations it planned to sell in stores and online, all running Linux software.The least expensive was the &quot;Surf&quot; with a 2GB flash memory drive and 256MB of DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM, to retail for NT$7,999 (US$247) when it comes out around the end of November. Another version of the Surf included a 4GB flash drive and 512MB of DDR2 DRAM, and will cost NT$9,999 when it comes out in mid-November. Both laptops have an Intel microprocessor.Two higher-priced Eee PCs were also launched. The NT$11,100 version included a built-in camera and speakers, and can carry out simple voice commands such as &quot;computer, access the Internet,&quot; or &quot;computer, make a phone call.&quot; It contains a 900MHz Intel Celeron M processor, 512MB of DDR2 DRAM (double data rate, generation two dynamic RAM) and a 4GB flash drive. The other laptop, at NT$13,888 and due out at the end of November, carries an 8G-byte flash drive and 1G byte of DDR2 DRAM in addition to features similar to the NT$11,100 version.At the launch ceremony, Asustek also showed off one Eee PC running Microsoft Windows XP Professional, version 2002, service pack 2. The hardware on board was the same as for the NT$11,100 Linux-based Eee PC. The Windows Eee PC included Office 2003 versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.&#160;
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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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Wal-Mart Stores Inc.  said on  Thursday it will charge less than $700 for two multimedia  desktop personal computer bundles from PC maker Dell Inc.   that it plans to start selling next month.
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U.S. and Canadian residents can pay $400 for one laptop to keep and one to give to a child in a developing nation.
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Walmart.com is offering a laptop that dives below the $500 pricepoint, and it&#39;s no accident the machine, from Linspire, runs a Linux-based operating system.
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Wal-Mart is offering a laptop priced at $498. The Linspire Balance laptop features a VIA C3, 1.0 GHz processor, 128 MB of RAM (expandable up to 512 MB) and a 30 GB hard drive.
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InfoWorld - The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.
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New lineup of low-cost PCs includes with some multimedia capabilities.
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The&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC)&#160;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.&quot;We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that&#39;s up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it&#39;s very, very successful. We&#39;re working very hard to do both,&quot; said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.It&#39;s a brand new development for the XO laptops, as the low-cost notebooks are known, and came about because of Microsoft&#39;s friendlier attitude towards open source software.Microsoft has embraced the open source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. &quot;And that really helps, because it&#39;s become a little bit less religious than it was a few years ago and that&#39;s really good. In the end, I think, the more people that have software and hardware out there, the better.&quot;The OLPC laptop currently runs a Fedora-based Linux OS, and&#160;Microsoft has offered a version of Windows XP for the laptop project. There had been speculation that OLPC would simply offer two separate laptop PCs, but a dual-boot system could remove the need to offer two separate laptops. Such a device could also reduce the need to have competing low-cost laptops -- running Linux or Windows -- in the marketplace. Taiwan&#39;s Asustek Computer has already launched an ultra-low cost laptop PC capable of running Windows XP, and executives at the company have touted XP compatibility as an advantage over the XO.OLPC is also working with Microsoft and possibly the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation on combining OLPC laptops with some of the educational programs run by Microsoft in developing countries.&quot;There is talk in that direction and it&#39;s directly with Bill and [Microsoft chief research and strategy officer] Craig Mundie , especially this morning, so this is really cooking at the moment,&quot; Negroponte said.Microsoft has launched programs in a number of developing countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, where it works with governments to build computer labs and Microsoft employees donate time to train people on how to use software and write programs.The OLPC Project started as an attempt to build a $100 laptop and work with governments to pass them out to kids in poor nations, but the laptop from the group, the XO, will likely end up costing nearly double that amount at first. The organizers of the effort, led by academics and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), hope high-volume sales of the device will drive down costs.The goal of OLPC is to make sure nobody misses out on the benefits of computing. The fear is that the price of a PC is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how software, the Internet and communications via computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives, or that poor countries will fall further behind the modern world due to their inability to access computers.&#160;