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I have an OLPC XO, and they are an amazing machine for children in under-developed countries: - Built-in camera & microphone - Oscilloscope app - Special O/S
by GnarfGnarf 9y ago
I have an OLPC XO, and they are an amazing machine for children in under-developed countries:
- Built-in camera & microphone
- Oscilloscope app
- Special O/S that goes dormant and uses minimum power when idle, to maximize battery life
- Can be charged with primitive generators and manual labour
- Networked
Brilliant design. Too bad too many governments never understood this and thought a PC or Apple laptop were the same thing.
- candiodari 9y agoYou mean ... aren't interested in things that aren't luxury products for already-rich government officials and clients. Same can be said for Unicef.
- digi_owl 9y agoYou also had a concerted effort from Microsoft et al to muddy the water in a massive way.
- icebraining 9y agoI'd say it was Intel more than Microsoft; the Classmate PC was a shitty clone that they marketed like crazy to target the OLPC, which ran an AMD chipset. Running full-blown Windows, no screen visible in sunlight, no easy mesh networking, etc. My brother got one of them as part of a subsidized program, and man, it sucked. Slow, barely any free disk space, it was a waste of money even at 50€.
- digi_owl 9y agoI seem to recall that MS managed to "convince" whoever was in charge to offer a OLPC variant with Windows on it, effectively watering down the core concept.
- metachris 9y agoYep, I was part of the open-source dev community back in the day. The push by Microsoft and subsequent deal with Negroponte to have the XO laptops also run Windows really disappointed a lot of the open source developers. Back then it felt a little like the last nail in the coffin, for me at least.