[Olpc-open] some questions...

[Kevin Purcell]

This is standard boiler plate for environmental testing of  
electronics hardware. Check your favorite device ... it will have  
these heights mentioned.

It comes from work like this "Hypsographic demography: The  
distribution of human population by altitude"

<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/95/24/14009.pdf>
<http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi? 
artid=24316&tools=bot>

> The global distribution of the human population by elevation is  
> quantified here. As of 1994, an estimated 1.88 × 109 people, or  
> 33.5% of the world’s population, lived within 100 vertical meters  
> of sea level, but only 15.6% of all inhabited land lies below 100 m  
> elevation. The median person lived at an elevation of 194 m above  
> sea level. Numbers of people decreased faster than exponentially  
> with increasing elevation. The integrated population density (IPD,  
> the number of people divided by the land area) within 100 vertical  
> meters of sea level was significantly larger than that of any other  
> range of elevations and represented far more people.

Or to pick say a potential target country (China) at random from the  
net as it has some decent how mountains and plateaus and a quarter of  
the world's population.

<http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/data/pop/pop_14.htm>

0.9% of the population of China live at an altitude of over 3000m.  
Whereas 33% of the world population live within 100m of sea level.

I wouldn't worry about it. The XO isn't going to magically cut out at  
high altitude.

So long as the air pressure is high enough to maintain convective  
cooling of the device it will keep working when you are having  
problems breathing at 5531m (the highest permanent habitation on the  
planet).

On Jan 20, 2007, at 9:02 AM, Bipin Gautam wrote:

> 1). I read in the laptop hardware specification
> Altitude: -15m to 3048m (14.7 to 10.1 psia) (operating)
>
> so the laptop ISNT designed to operate over 3048m height and doing so
> will void all warenties?

--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell at pobox.com