One Laptop Per Child issues pitch to fix slow boot sequence
Sure, come the holidays, all the kids will be asking for their iThis and iThat, but if you really want to gift them with some geek chic, you now have a limited chance to put a funky little XO computer — the “$100 laptop” meant for the developing world — under the tree. Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project has soldiered through doubts and debates to put together a strong tech alliance and a tough and colorful, open-source machine (actual price now $188) that has gotten good reviews even from youngsters raised on powerful PCs. But while a number of countries have talked about ordering millions of the laptops for schools and villages, the talk has yet to translate into purchase orders. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Negroponte. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
To get the ball rolling, OLPC is holding a “Give 1, Get 1″ sale. From Nov. 12 through Nov. 26, you can (if you’re in the U.S. or Canada) order two of the laptops for $399 — one that will go to an underprivileged child and the other that you can keep, donate or bestow upon some privileged child or open-source tinkerer. The hope is that enough orders come in to allow the project to seed the developing world with thousands of laptops to demonstrate the benefits and create a market for the million units a month that the assembly line will be able to crank out by January. “Any time and anywhere a device is shown, the interest is incredible,” said Gustavo Arenas, corporate vice president of high growth markets for chipmaker AMD, a founding member of the initiative. “We’ll drive through the initial hesitation.” And don’t discount the value of getting the gadget in the hands of the open-sourcerers. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Walter Bender, project president. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”
I say let’s do this the Corporate/Bush way. Let that child sell his or her ass on the open market for whatever the traffic will bear, and then, when they’ve earned enough to pay for their computer, the give me mine free!!!!!
Brilliant! Let’s quickly hook up for continuous online chatting, gaming, etc. the remaining three billion unwired kids!
Really, all they are currently doing are nonesensical things like learning to play together, climb a tree, feed a cow, build a tree house, doodle, hit a baseball, swim, pet a puppy, generally screw around and…well, you get the idea.
It’s clearly the final step in the plan by the fast food industry to get these kids as obese as their American counterparts.
Why not just skip a step and offer cranial implants for newborns? That way, your/their kids will grow up wired (literally) 24/7 and you’ll never need to speak to them.
I would love to get my hands on on of the OLPCs to tinker with but even with the thought of charity in mind $400?
I can buy a fully funtional laptop for anoth $100-$200.
They need to lower the cost or I don’t think this is going to work.
Should that be “issues a patch”?
Well! I turned to the comments because I wanted to see if others thought, as I did, that this was a good idea and worth supporting.
The first four posts were decidely ego-centric. None focused on whether OLPC is a worthy goal and if this particular program is a good way to seed the market by getting several thousand laptops donated overseas.
Kudos to Nick Negroponte,but remember that “no good deed goes unpunished!”
Erik — normally you’d be right, but in this case, it was more pitch than patch.
John