OLPC Struggles to Realize Ambitious Vision
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The nonprofit One Laptop Per Child Project struggles with slow orders and competition from commercial vendors.
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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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Four years after its splashy launch, chip maker is still struggling.
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Microsoft is stuck in the past.  It desperately needs to seek out a new future.
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This recent milestone shows the current state of an ongoing, multi-year project that has been (and continues to be) a series of opportunities and challenges.
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Consumer goods company is facing its challenges and looking for a turnaround.
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The company is far from resting on its laurels.
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After much hoopla over Windows Presentation Foundation and its promise to create rich graphical user interfaces for Vista, not many of the demonstrated technologies have become reality.
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A forthcoming version of the OLPC's XO laptop could have the ability to boot both Linux and Windows, according to the OLPC's founder.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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Despite its much-needed product, the company's growth potential is limited.
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Group demonstrates possible solutions, but lawmakers also need to act.
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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;
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The insurance-focused software firm struggles for growth.
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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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Large OLED screens look great, but making them is not a million laughs. Producing them in large quantities remains a work in progress, executives say.
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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.