OLPC Laptop - an open source substandard ?

[yokotashi at centrum.cz]

Hello Thomas,


> I have an old PC with 500 MH and widows xp is very slow, so it has for linux to be at least 750 MHz roundabout, I guess, to play music with songbirdnest or mail with thunderbird.

I have 2x233 MHz Pentium PRO SMP with 512 MB of RAM and it fits me - it
all depends on applications. There are big, slow and bad written
applications and the better ones.

> I am aware, that all is always a compromise. So better a 180 Dollar Laptop with no substandard as a 100-150 Dollar Laptop with wrong equiped software. Whatfor do we have a open source development like Firefox and openoffice???? Not using this is as well a bashing of these projects.
>  
> so... 750 MHZ processor .... and Lithium battery... and 2 GB flash memory.

The 750 MHz CPU means 2-3x more power consumption ... main problem is,
that the CPU is x86, ARM or MIPS would be better, but is too late to
change arch now.

Can you imagine behavior of LiION battery in 50 degrees of celsious? The
battery lifetime? The self-discharging? And LiION batteries are
extremely senzible to charging. They can explode, when charging device
is broken, and one injuried children for one million laptops is enough
... either moral, either by lost of trust to us and laptops. 

> therefore no cam, no microphone and only a monochrome display.

I'll not comment "no can" because I don't know the price, but microphone
input is on the chip and microphone costs 10 us cents in local shop here
in Prague (Czech Republic/Europe), so it mus be cheaper, when you'll get
one million of them. No-color display is similar sub-standard as
no-OOffice and will be more visible, I mean. It is only changing one
sub- to another.

You did write about too much USB slots in one of your mails. It is the
same problem, as microphone. These USBs are on chips and connector cost 
30 us cents in local store here. This is not the correct way to save
money :-(. And three slots are very usable. These Childrens in a bit
more richer places can plug in printer, scanner, external keyboard (for
example when the internal crashes - notebooks keyboards do it often),
old USB flash (16-64MB pieces are trash on the EU/US now, we can send
them to africa instead of liquidation) and similar devices.

Have a nice day
Yokotashi

> And not a second generation laptop eliminating the mistakes of the first generation, deliver quality from the first laptop! Children in Europe would not buy a substandard.
> That?s all I wanted to suggest to adjust or modify a little bit.
> 
> Kind Regards, happy christmas and hope, the next santa claus will bring these laptops!
> 
> 
> PS: Don?t forget a 10 meters engergy cable. ;-) or: even better: a power solution over the usb/Ethernet-cable, which will be connected to the schools server.
> 
> -- 
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