OLPC Heralds Era of Low-Cost Computing
629787
One-Laptop-Per-Child's XO has inspired a new class of low-cost laptop and highlighted the need for computing resources in developing nations.
701802
Intel engineers are developing a motherboard based on one of its chips for an OLPC laptop.
647353
Computers long ago ceased to be simply tools. Instead, like digital music players and digital cameras, they are coming to reflect peopleÂs tastes and aspirations.
180136
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;
741161
First, the good news. The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) announced on Monday that it has authorized the start of mass-production of the XO laptop, a low-cost but powerful device designed to reduce world poverty by extending the reach of the Internet to the planet&#39;s most remote regions.
642252
(InfoWorld) - The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has raised the price of its XO laptop to $188, according to an Associated Press report. OLPC spokesman George Snell confirmed the price change on Friday, the AP report said. Snell blamed the price hike on "currency fluctuations" and the rising cost of raw materials like nickel and silicon. OLPC executives in the U.S. were not immediately available for comment. Previously, OLPC said the XO would cost $176. The reported price hike comes at a critical juncture for OLPC. TheÂ XO laptopÂ has gone through four prototype stages, and the design has been locked down for weeks. In August, Quanta Computer completed a manufacturing run of 300 units to test the production process -- the final step before mass production of the XO begins later this month or in early October. OLPC customers are counting on a low-cost laptop, and it was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the latest price hike will have onÂ orders for the XO.
339021
U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices  has unveiled a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
415452
Here's what one university library found when they compared the hardware and software costs.
383029
AMD had an OLPC laptop on hand to showcase the fact that its Geode processor powers the device designed for emerging markets
552956
A new company thinks it has the answer to the complaints of scientists and engineers looking for high-performance computing (HPC) on the desktop. The Orion Cluster Workstation packs the power of a PC cluster into a desktop-size package using low-power chips and an innovative motherboard design.
183657
The open-source computer is inexpensive and actually looks good.
661566
(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.
63522
Hewlett-Packard next year will take a fresh approach to its utility computing initiative with a product designed to lower the cost of running corporate computing systems.
691175
The Microsoft Chairman discusses where the XO laptop fits on his radar screen (not too high) as well as other efforts to bring low-cost computing to emerging markets.
364545
U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  has introduced a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
278793
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.
401946
From the "luggable" Apple IIc and Commodore SX-64 to today's Asus Eee PC, portable computers have gotten ever smaller and sleeker. Here are some favorites from days past.