CES 2007: One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Laptop Hands On

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While at CES 2007 a company named Marvell that's involved with the wireless aspects of the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) was showing off the little green machine at their booth. We took a look at this storied $150 laptop to be sold in poor areas of the world.

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About the OLPC

For those unaware of what the OLPC project is, basically it's a project driven by Nicholas Negroponte to develop a laptop that's simple to use and very cheap to make in order to serve students in 3rd world countries or poor areas of more developed countries. The original goal was to develop a laptop that would cost about $100, but the target cost is now $150.

The children that would receive this laptop would be in the 7-13 year old range and in countries such as Cambodia. The OLPC laptop uses a crank to charge the battery since power is not readily available for charging laptops in some areas. The laptop also uses just flash memory (no standard hard drive), a low powered 500MHz processor from AMD and simple opearting system named &quot;Sugar&quot;. While some aspects of this laptop are very basic, it does have some neat features built in such as wireless communication between devices so students and teachers can share and communicate in the classroom. Four USB ports are also very generous for this type of laptop I would say.

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As you can tell by the pictures in the laptop it is of course made of plastic, but feels quite durable nonetheless. I'd worry about those antennas getting snapped off with the kids rough handling, but they're not quite as flimsy as they look and are important to improving the wireless reception.. Plus it makes the laptop look somewhat friendly, being green and having antennas maybe kids would think of it as a benevolent alien. To be honest, it reminds me of something you would have seen in the old cartoon show The Jetsons.

The keyboard is kind of neat in the way it's designed. It uses sort of a rubber overlay and there's no gaps between keys so that sand, dirt or oreo crumbs (which I don't believe they have in Cambodia anyway) won't get into the keyboard area and ruin things.

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That's awesome. You got to see the OLPC notebook in person!

I thought I remembered a different color though. The pictures make it look a lot nicer than I'd expected. Pretty cool-looking actually.

I was expecting something a little more Playskool-ish.

What's the weight like on that thing?

 

I'd guess about 4lbs, they don't really have detailed specs and that's just sort of a what I remember it kind of weighing estimate.

 

Really neat!

 

What kind of operating system does this thing have? I would guess not Windows.

 

It's a derivative of Linux, but not full fledged, basically a subset of Linux. They called it "Sugar".

 

The last story in these News Bits has more info on the "Sugar" operating system. It is *very* different than Windows, Mac, or even Linux.

Very cool that you got to see the XO in person. Four USB ports is a lot indeed; it sounds like the designers intend for numerous external devices to be connected to it.

 

Thats great! I could probably use one of these well, no need to carry around a power brick (although cranking away in the middle of lecture could be rather odd...), and it will serve basic purposes well. For $150, its amazing.
I think they should offer a program where American consumers can buy them for $300, because it would subsidize costs by a bit, and it would be a pretty hot gadget.
'Get an inexpensive laptop and help children in Third World countries. The OLPC.' Makes for a great ad slogan, no?

 

Those look awesome. I'm glad they made it to where a kid would be proud to carry one around. Heck, I kind of want to carry one around.

 

I've read it somewhere that it has a built in camera!
Is it true?

 

yes, you can see camera on the right screen frame.

 

4 USB , water resistant keyboard , probably light weight , literally infinity battery life --- so when will it be available for order on newegg ?

 

I don't think theres a camera on it.

About the battery it's said here in Brasil (Brasil is sponsoring the first production wich viabilized the project), that it will come in 2 version, one manual charger and one conventional battery.

The screen resolution is 800x600 isn't it? They said that the screen was the more expensive part, like $75, or half the cost of the comp.

The flash memory is for the schools to have server were you can plug you computer and read the info you need. Also they will develop some internet sistem for people to use at home (Even parents will be stimulated to use it, so it's not only chieldren only, but a whole digital inclusion.)

Abaxter: here in brasil we have original oreos! I am eating one generic version of it right now

 

AFAIK, Sugar is the name of the GUI. The operating system is Linux, based on Fedora. While is quite hard to understand what you meant from "not full fledged", I dowloaded an image of the OS to play under Parallels (could not boot into GUI, probably some problem with Parallel's video drivers, but it is reported to work fine under VMware) and I can say it has anything a modern Linux distro of similar size could have, so, I'd certainly call it full fledged. But Sugar is a quite different GUI from anything desktop-related, and even PDA and other mobile device GUIs. Take a look at wikipedia and the OLPC wiki to know more ( http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Main_Page). Also, the OLPC in its current incarnation does have a webcam, has a res of 1024x768, and uses mesh wifi for communication. It is a really nice concept, in that its goal is to help people become really educated in IT instead of merely being MS-Office drones, and it relies exclusively in OSS for this - since then everyone can open up the software, make necessary changes, and learn a lot in the process. I hope it succeeds.

::EDIT:: Here is a very good roundup explaining the hardware and the concept of mesh computing:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2007010902326NWHWEV

 

I think the money would have been better spent on "One Teacher Per Child" or "One Clean Water Source Per Child" or even "One Blackboard Per School".

The Sugar interface is confusing and next to useless as near as I can tell. They decided (on typical OSS fashion) that everything done before was crap and they needed to do something completely different. Then they had a bunch of academics sit down and decide on what an interface for kids should look like....like they know.

The actual costs of the laptops + training + support at the schools is going to be closer to $1000 each. A $2000 library can serve 400 children at $5/each.

Great idea, not so great execution.


Look at the happy smiling unclothed children! Aren't they glad to have laptops?

 

I felt a great disturbance in the force when I read this.
I propose a new definition for the word irony:
"Poor kids with $150 prefer to buy a laptop than
food, water, electricity, shoes, proper beds"

 

Yes, but now they're internet-enabled children they can buy all that stuff online.

 

They got the "My first laptop" look down pat.

 

Someone must be listening!.... Public can purchase $100 laptop

 

Actually yes it does, on the right side.

 

I tend to agree that given most of the schools these kids are in do not have books, clean water, properly trained teachers or even adequate food -- the project is somewhat questionable.

 

The OLPC doubles as an ebook reader. The actual cost of making thousands of books available in digital format vs. printing them - millions of copies - anyone guess what is cheaper?

I think you guys don't get the idea of the project. Perhaps it is difficult to understand since it deals with realities that most of you will never come close to (this is a fair assumption; most of us have notebooks and internet access, so unless any of you volunteered to do work at the kind of place this laptop is intended for, you've probably only heard about it in the news).

Yes, in some cases the children do not have access to food or water. This is a sad problem, that the OLPC does not seek to solve. Specially because it is a problem that is on the hands of politicians worldwide, it is not a technical problem. What the OLPC try to accomplish is another equally grave question - the education of these children. Because, if you can't educate them, they will ALWAYS be starving and dependent on charity from other people. I doubt most people here (including me) would rather donate US$2000 to buy food to poor children than buy new notebook. So saying that these children lack food, pardon me, it is just hypocritical. If one somehow manages that they become educated enough so that they can deal with their own future, then one day they won't depend more on other people goodwill. Hope it is not the fear of other countries stop being underdeveloped and begin to being a viable competitor to established, first-world countries that lead too many people to bash the OLPC without hardly knowing the premises it is based or the conditions of the people to whom it is intended.

 

Yep, no Oreos. But third-world countries are BIG on snacks...I don't know why, but the ones that I have traveled to have great snacks.

 

This is normal in all laptops. Perhaps not always half the cost of the entire system--but the percentage depends entirely on which system you're talking about.

Since I first heard about the OLPC, this constant increase in the projected cost has been rather disappointing.

I think the idea of "buy 2 get 1" is rather commendable. It might be a bit idealistic though and subject to corruption. I'd pay $300 to give one to little kids I know and it would make me feel good knowing another was being given to a kid who could really benefit from it.

 

A blackboard and a library of books would still be cheaper and easier to maintain then these things by a longshot.

These countries are lacking blackboards, physical schools, and libraries of books. How is giving them laptops going to fix that? The OLPC people make it sound like it's a magic bullet for education. It's a tool, and it has to be used as part of an integrated program with other tools. They don't have the other tools yet...

Does anyone remember when they predicted the same thing would happen in American schools in the 1980s? Other then a few 'pilot programs' it never came to pass. Having laptops in the classroom is *distracting* in a lot of settings and undermines the ability of the teacher to teach.

Unfortunately, people think anything originating at MIT must be awesome, and the Media Lab is really good at making slick powerpoint presentations with mockup hardware and mockup GUIs. The people in charge of OLPC have decided that these children don't need the other tools of education that they lack - they will magically all teach themselves to code and all because contributors to the Open Source movement. I'm serious, go read their responses to questions on the website.

The Sugar UI is especially disturbing. I played around with it in VMWare today, and I have to say I haven't seen anything this useless in a long time. I guess that's what happens when your interface guidelines are put together by MIT academics who have all this "research" they have never been able to convince anyone to use.

All of their user interface guidelines are pushing collaboration, as if these children are going to magically form a hivemind and educate themselves. Collaboration is only part of the picture - efficiently distributing content from teacher to student and allowing for individuals to perform tasks on their own are also important, and are relegated to mere "activities" under the current guidelines.

The over all problem - this whole project is being run by a bunch of Open Source techno-utopians. If you read Nicholas Negroponte's books, he basically says that technology will bring us a perfect society. I believe in the ideas of Free Software, but the problem is that OLPC is promising these countries one thing (a tool to educate children) and delivering another (a tool which is the embodiment of their personal ideals about HOT to educate children) and the two things are not the same.

I have been involved in "experimental learning" programs and it often takes a while to get it right. These countries can't afford to spend this money on something that won't really be up to snuff for 10 years.

When all is said and done, I expect it to fail. When the partner countries realize that their children will not know how to use any other computers (because of the Sugar UI) they will cancel orders, perhaps switching to the Intel project, which plans to use a standard desktop based UI. That or Sugar will eventually be cancelled and replaced with a real OS.

 

Not all of those children in the world are lacking clean water or food... but they may lack a communications infrastructure or even transport infrastructure. Look at this presentation to see how even the highly educated scolars in Sweden have presumptions about the development in the world.

Second, you must remember that OLPC is not mainly a computer but a replacement for paper books, and a tool for communicating and collaborating. Paper books are heavy, expensive and can be destroyed easily ... it's also not easy to distribute them. Distributing in digital form (on a CD for ex. if not through a satelite internet) is much easier. And the OLPC makes it very easy for children to share the books and other documents.

BTW I just read somewhere (unfortunetally I can't find the url now), the economy of many so called "third world" countries is based on trading food. Giving them food charity actually destroys that economy and makes them even more dependant.

So, give them knowledge and power not charity.