[Olpc-open] [Edu-sig] OLPC G1G1 sales start today

[Nicole Lee]

The XO and the Eee are very different laptops - comparing them side by side
is not fair to either. The Eee is a small, portable computer for first-world
countries, while the XO is much more in the vein of appropriate technology
for more remote areas. After all, even if the Eee does run more powerfully
or play flash better, if you put it in a dusty, muddy, rainy, or electricity
deprived area it's not going to run at all. All laptops are not created
equal, but that doesn't mean there's an absolute scale for 'good' and 'bad'
products, or uses. Both of these laptops can be used effectively towards the
same goal - education, but they should certainly be used in different ways.

XOs do run slowly, which I personally have found plenty frustrating. That's
fine. I have a relatively powerful laptop that I use for school - there's no
reason to try and run a Matlab simulation on an XO. But the slowness is a
tradeoff; you sacrifice faster speed for things like ruggedness, cost,
energy efficiency... the list goes on.

Do we need to be dependent on the absolute buy-in of more powerful nations?
Maybe. Politics and funding are certainly a factor in changing the world,
and that's a fact of life that cannot be ignored. But it's hardly under our
control if they don't like what has been carefully and thoughtfully crafted,
just because it isn't as fast or shiny as things that go out in the
technology market every day. So is it better to try and create something
that the average American (for example) consumer would want to buy, or to
create something that would be useful to the children that the XOs are being
shipped to?

Neither of these laptops is a magic bullet. They're just tools, and tools
are tools: you can argue that you could use a rock or a hammer or a nail gun
to nail two pieces of wood together, but I can certainly think of situations
in which one might be preferable to the other two. While we can probably
agree that there are few situations in which you'd want just a rock, I find
it hard to believe that you could make a solid argument of which of the
remaining two is absolutely superior. It's a question of relativity, but a
lot of people seem to lack any reasonable sense of perspective when it comes
to the XO.

-Nikki

On Nov 18, 2007 4:54 PM, François Schnell <francois.schnell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2007 6:35 AM, Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
> wrote:
> > On Nov 15, 2007, at 4:43 PM, François Schnell wrote:
> > > Looks like no one from OLPC is reading this list?
> >
> > Plenty of us are, but we're busy trying to get a quality product out
> > the door.
> >
>
> Thanks Ivan for taking the time for a quick reply.
>
> I certainly can imagine that in this first mass production stage the
> OLPC team is very very busy.
> I've also seen Nicholas Negroponte presentation on CNN and I certainly
> hope this will sky rocket G1G1 XO sells :)
>
> Concerning the Eee I've just seen this from the Boston Globe:
>
> """
> The machine is being sold for $399 in the United States, but also will
> be sold for as little as $199 to school systems here and abroad.
> """
>
> """
> Asus is in talks with governments about selling the machines in bulk
> for free distribution to schoolchildren. A company executive said last
> month that a deal already had been reached with one government, but
> Leung provided no details. Last week, the city of Fresno, Calif., said
> it would buy 1,000 of the laptops for use in its schools.
> """
> http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/11/14/cheap_laptop_as_m
>
> In the meantime an ICT section of the National French Education has
> just tested the XO.
> The results are not brilliant.
> In particular they didn't see why the laptop looks like a "Fisher
> Price" toy and they find the XO too slow (shouldn't be the case of the
> Eee).
> They conclude that in regard to the current price/performance of the
> XO it leaves plenty of space for competition from other companies.
>
> The full article (in French) can be found here:
>
> http://www.journaldunet.com/solutions/systemes-reseaux/reportage/07/1107-education-nationale-olpc/1.shtml
>
> Personally I'm hopeful OLPC will eventually be obliged to adopt the
> right distribution plan to reach the right price.
> I'm just worried about  the time lost.
> Lets make Winston Churchill wrong on the second part of this quote? ;)
> "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after
> they've tried everything else."
> Winston Churchill .
>
> In the meantime, since I can't buy an XO for now, I'm turning myself
> to the Eee to see how I can contribute to the Negroponte/Papert/Kay
> educational vision on this platform.
>
> I've seen Python and pyGtk are also there by default :)
> http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/eee-pc-review.ars/6
>
> And some folks already can't wait to see how to adapt some of the
> great gems and ideas from the OLPC project, as summarized here:
>
> """
> A lot of innovation has gone in the development of that really
> resource constrained platform [XO] , so I was thinking it would make
> perfect sense to re-use pieces of their efforts on the eee pc.
> """
> http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=2417
>
> I wish all the best to the OLPC team at this very busy time.
> Whatever happens next I believe we are truly living in a great period
> initiated by the OLPC project. :)
>
> francois
>
> > --
> > Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org
> >
> >
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> Olpc-open at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
>
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