Learning as easy as pie
The "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) project is already supplying interested governments with laptops. It expects to cross the one-million threshold this year.
- Dr. Jürgen Rink
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Once upon a time, a man set out to give away an exceptional laptop to millions of children. What sounds like a fairy tale is actually the "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) project, which is already supplying interested governments with laptops. It expects to cross the one-million next year.
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Originally called the 100 dollar laptop, its name is now XO, as is the one sent to c't magazine. The non-profit organization called One Laptop per Child (OLPC) developed the XO laptop, which was the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte. XO is not only an entry-level laptop, but also part of a comprehensive education project. Negroponte, cofounder of MIT's Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched One Laptop per Child in collaboration with other staff members at in July of 2005.
OPLC is based on the conviction that capacity building and the education of schoolchildren in developing and industrializing nations will make the world a bit more just and peaceful. The XO laptop provides users with a means of communications and access to content to promote this goal. The OLPC's goals are grand: millions of XOs are to be manufactured. In two years, the annual production is to reach around 100 million items, more than the current global annual production of all notebooks.
The organization is developing the hardware and software for the XO and pulls the strings for the manufacture and sale of the devices. It has already signed a contract for the production of the laptop with the world's largest notebook manufacturer Quanta, which will be manufacturing the laptops at its plant in the eastern Chinese town of Changshu. The first batch of 875 prototypes (code-named BTest-1) was delivered to developers at the end of last year; in February, Quanta shipped a four-digit number of the second prototype called BTest-2. This year, serial production of the first million XO laptops is to be completed, but developers still have their work cut out for them if they are going to reach that goal, as the list of errors for BTest-2 illustrates (wiki.laptop.org/go/BTest2_Release_Notes).
Initially, OLPC planned to sell the laptop only to governments, not consumers or retailers. While selling the XO via conventional sales channels would help fund the project, possibly with an additional charge added on, the small staff at the OLPC says it does not have the capacity to go that route; it even does without a marketing team. After an analyst meeting in May, OLPC doesn't rule out shipping of XO Laptops to U.S. schools any more.
A comprehensive security concept and cooperation with United Nations staff are to ensure that the XO does not fall into the wrong hands once it has been delivered to government agencies. Furthermore, hardware is being selected to make the units unattractive for thieves. These steps are being taken to prevent a gray market from being created when millions of XO laptops are bestowed upon the world.
The UN and donations help
At present, nations like Argentina, Brazil, Libya, and Nigeria have already promised to order a total of almost 3 million laptops. Only Libya has already signed an agreement; it has agreed to provide each of its 1.2 million schoolchildren with one of the laptops. Time will tell what these declarations of intent are worth once the laptop has reached serial production, because then the OLPC plans to start signing purchase agreements.
The OLPC says that production will begin when governments have ordered a total of five to 10 million units. After recent difficulties in reaching this goal, OLPC set the order minimum to 3 million and plans to sell XO to U.S. schools.
To reach this goal, the OLPC's Chairman Negroponte is drumming up support on the world's political stage. In January of 2005, he announced the founding of the OLPC as an organization at the World Economic Summit in Davos, and in November of 2005 he presented the laptop along with Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary-General, at the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia.
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The XO laptop is made for children's hands and is therefore much smaller than conventional notebooks; its two "ears" at the top protect ports when closed and contain WLAN antennas. The laptop is a convertible whose display can be pivoted for reading.
But handshakes at the highest political level are not the only way that the project is to be expanded to a large number of countries; rather, Negroponte and Kemal Dervis, head of the UN's Development Program (UNDP) signed an agreement at the World Economic Summit 2006 in which the UNDP promises to use its 166 offices in almost all nations to support the OLPC project from initial contact with education ministers all the way to logistics.
Such a large project requires sound financing. The start-up capital comes from sponsors: AMD, Brightstar, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES Global, and Red Hat. In May of 2006, Nortel Networks and eBay also got on board. By February of 2006, Negroponte had managed to collect 20 million dollars from the sponsors, which would not have been possible without his charisma and excellent contacts. The OLPC can not only cover all of its expenses with this funding, but also the costs for the development of the laptop. The OLPC consists of only 10 chief members and eight consultants, including Alan Kay and CTO Mary Lou Jepsen.
The sheer size of the project makes it interesting for major industry players. In addition, the large scale is necessary to keep the cost of the XO down. Naturally, all of the sponsors want to earn money from hardware and software in the production of the XO; while the companies are supporting the OLPC, they will be paying that money back to themselves once production of the XO starts. Quanta will be earning money from the manufacture, Red Hat from Fedora Linux, and CMO from the display. Marvell plans to sell the WLAN hardware at a profit, Google is providing cards, and eBay is chipping in with Skype and PayPal. In Libya, SES Astra will be setting up a satellite system.
For the first round XO laptops, the sales price has just risen from 150 to 175 US dollars; the XO will thus not to be a 100 dollar laptop at the outset. The laptop will cost around 160 US dollars, with the display and the CPU plus chipset being the two largest cost items at around 30 US dollars apiece. Quanta & Co. thus have a margin of 10 to 20 US dollars. After manufacture, the OLPC will make sure that the laptops reach governments. The governmental agencies involved will handle logistics on location, possibly with the assistance of the UNDP.
Even stripped-down x86 notebooks cost too much, and current operating systems are not suitable for children. Therefore, common AMD/Intel hardware is not being taken into consideration, nor are current operating systems and their user interfaces. The project had to start from scratch. In doing so, it came up with an XO that contains a lot of innovations because the project did not have to focus on the compatibility of hardware and software.
An entirely new laptop
The display is sensational, the envisioned power consumption record- breaking, and operation different from the ground up - not just intuitive, but playful in the ideal case. The OLPC is considering a mechanical generator to provide power where electricity from wall sockets is a luxury. c't received a prototype from the first batch for a test drive.
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The XO's mainboard is found behind the panel in the display lid. AMD's Geode is in the middle, with the Southbridge to the right.
Design Continuum designed the original laptop, with Fuseproject taking up the design for the prototypes now available. The XO is an inch smaller than a 12-inch notebook and weighs around one kilogram with the battery. Because the mainboard is in the lid behind the display, the bottom part of the laptop containing the keyboard is very thin – ideal for children's hands. The keys are also specially designed for this target audience with a width of 13.3 millimeters, compared to the 19-millimeter keys used on notebook keyboards for adults.
The bottom half of the laptop extends behind the display when closed, exposing a stable handle. When the display is opened, the handle prevents the laptop from tipping over to the back due to its relatively heavy lid. The opened machine is expected to be robust against dirt and drops of water. The laptop's case thickness measures two millimeters, which also increases the robustness of the units.
The core of the mainboard is a 366 MHz Geode GX2-500 processor with a mere 32 KB of cache. The x86-compatible CPU is otherwise mainly found in embedded hardware. It contains an integrated graphics chip and Northbridge, but the Southbridge AMD CS5536 rides on its own chip with USB 2.0, audio, and an IDE connection with a data connection of 32 MHz. The system has its own memory controller because the one in the Geode system was too slow for the developers.
While the computing performance does not nearly match that of current notebooks, the Geode 500 also peaks at a consumption of 3.5 watts, with the chipset making do with less than one watt; Geode systems have been optimized for especially low power consumption. Since the mainboard can do without a fan and a cooling system completely in light of these values, it fits into the lid behind the display.
The laptop will have 256 MB of DDR 266 DRAM but no hard drive, storing data instead on 1024 MB of NAND flash memory (prototype BTest- 1 has 128 MB DDR and 512 NAND flash). The XO also does without an optical drive, meaning that it has no moving parts inside. Extensions can, however, be added via USB slots and a single SD card slot.
Data can be stored on a school computer via WLAN. The OLPC plans to provide such a server with 330 gigabytes of memory for roughly 100 US dollars. Unfortunately, the first such server has yet to be seen. Few schoolchildren live near their school; most live near other schoolchildren. So the developers came up with something clever for wireless connections between XOs via WLAN: the WLAN chips operate as a mesh, with each laptop passing on data for others. Less infrastructure is needed in such mesh networks; in extreme cases, all that is needed is a single WLAN base station to get all of the schoolchildren connected to the Internet.
As "mesh point portals", individual XOs keep in contact with the WLAN base station providing access to the Internet. Each one passes on data to the other mesh points. The entire mesh works from one and the same WLAN interface. The OLPC laptop is the first implementation of the IEEE's 802.11s standard for mesh networks [1].
Marvell's 88W8388 USB WLAN chip presented at the beginning of 2005 provides a connection to this network within the XO. The chip contains an ARM processor core in addition to a bit of RAM as firmware memory; it communicates in accordance with IEEE 802.11g. Thanks to its ARM core, the WLAN controller can even stay in contact when the XO is switched off. But you shouldn't expect to break any speed records with a WLAN mesh: the typical data rate across multiple nodes would be pretty slow for DSL at one to two megabits per second. But that would be enough to look something up in an online encyclopedia or to communicate by e-mail and chat. Above all, the mesh serves to network children without any external connections. In fact, the XO is even useful for video conferences via Skype or Telepathy thanks to the installed camera and microphone.
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Breakthrough display
The XO's main selling point is its display. Only 7.5 inches across, the panel was developed completely anew by Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) and is easy to read both in full sunlight and indoors, surpassing all common laptop displays in this respect. The panel has two modes of operation. Behind the layer of fluid crystals is a sort of sieve whose broad lattices reflect and refract ambient light. Because the color filters are behind it and therefore do not play any role in creating images, you see a black and white image in bright light (mode of operation 1). Thanks to an incredible resolution of 200 dpi (1200 x 900 pixels), text appears razor-sharp; other notebook displays have a long way to go to match this performance. The BTest-1 prototype has a reflecting display, while the BTest-2 machine does not.
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With the XO's dual-mode display, the color image (righ) only appears with LED backlighting. Under ambient light, the bright latticework (left) reflects light, and the image appears in black-and-white.
Once the LED backlight is switched on, light passes through the color filters from behind and penetrates the holes in the distribution sieve, creating a color image (mode of operation 2). Each of the 1200 x 900 pixels is then either red, green, or blue. As it takes one green, one red, and one blue subpixel to create a pixel, the resolution of color images is only around 800 x 600. The DCON display controller provides for automatic antialiasing to smooth out edges. In addition, it refreshes the image even when the rest of the computer is on standby. Luminous intensity is only 64 cd/m2, half that of a normal notebook panel, and contrast leaves something to be desired at 82:1. But that's enough indoors, and outdoors the ambient light helps, though the more ambient light there is, the less color you see.
A few keys are provided to set the brightness of the display. The XO will also have a back light sensor, though the prototype either did not have one or it simply didn't work. In our measurements, we determined power consumption of 1.5 watts for the display, but power consumption is to be reduced down to one watt. This value may also be a new world record; other displays consume at least four times as much power.
Ergonomics and ports
A capacitive touchpad is found below the keyboard; you can move the cursor with your finger as usual. But in addition, the entire surface to the left and right of the touchpad can also be used for input because a resistive layer is below it. You can use a stylus to write on it or draw pictures.
Of course, the XO is designed to promote reading. The display can therefore be turned on its axis and closed on top of the keyboard as is done with the tablet PCs called "convertibles". But unlike them, the XO does not have a touch-sensitive display. A few keys and a navigation knob on the margin of the display, however, allow the Sugar user interface to be operated without one. Field tests currently underway may reveal whether the link connecting the convertible display to the keyboard will withstand handling by children. It might turn out to be a weak point. The organization has already sent some of the B2 prototypes to a few countries, including several hundred XOs intended for Brazilian schoolchildren. In addition, around 100 XOs have also been delivered to a test school in Galadima, Nigeria. No results have been published yet for these tests.
Ports are hidden to the left and right at the top of the display behind flaps. On the right, there are two USB ports; to the left, an audio port and an additional USB connection. The audio port also has a mode in which it serves as an input as an A/D converter, which is useful for handicraft projects using photo sensors or measurement devices, for example. The two flaps not only protect the ports, but also serve as WLAN antennas.
Battery or wind-up
A nickel metal hydride battery consisting of five cells stores 22.8 Wh, around a half to a third of what is normally found in notebooks. Lithium-ion batteries have been deemed too dangerous by the developers, but new lithium batteries may mean that the XO will eventually not contain NiMH, which discharge quickly.
Negroponte has a very optimistic target for the XO's power consumption: two watts. Compared to around 10 watts for even the thriftiest laptops, that would be an excellent performance, giving the machine of runtime of more than 10 hours despite the small battery capacity. The prototypes are nowhere near this performance because power management does not yet work. At present, the laptop runs for 2.5 hours with and 3.5 hours without display illumination, consuming 9.1 and 6.5 watts, respectively.
Low power consumption is important for areas without a connection to the grid or with only intermittent power supply. Power consumption has to be so low that the battery charge will cover most of the day and allow the small amount of power from a crank to charge it. Originally, the XO was designed with a crank inside the case. It turned out that the mechanical load was too great, so that this type of power supply has been taken off the drawing board. Now, a type of yo-yo is being discussed: the generator has a windup string and provides enough power for 10 minutes of XO operation from one minute of winding. The system has not, however, reached the prototype status yet.
Software for education
The user interface and applications are based on a didactic concept that relies on Seymour Papert's and Alan Kay's later theories of constructive learning. Negroponte's ideas, which he has described in his bestseller "Being Digital", have also been implemented. Only open source software will be used on the XO both in terms of drivers and file formats. But the OLPC had to make one exception: the firmware for the WLAN controller is currently only available as a binary image. Otherwise, schoolchildren are to be allowed to change their system as much as possible. And that requires open code.
The BIOS is a LinuxBIOS with OpenFirmware. LinuxBIOS is licensed under the GNU GPL; the source code is therefore in principle open to everyone and can be edited. A streamlined version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux (kernel 2.6.19) is installed on the computers along with a graphical interface called Sugar developed especially for the OLPC. The language and fonts in the user interface and applications will be localized, as will the keyboard.
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The Sugar user interface: the symbols at the bottom left open applications, while the circle in the middle shows which applications are already open, and the symbols at the top indicate modes of operation (solo or in the mesh network).
After booting, the project's X-shaped logo appears in the middle of Sugar. Once the mouse is moved towards the edge of the screen or a special key is pressed, a wide frame containing various symbols appears. At the top left, there is a circle with eight dots that stands for the group of all users currently in the mesh network. A circle with three dots symbolizes a group of people individually chosen. And if you click on a circle with only one dot, you can work alone with your own applications.
At the bottom left, the Sugar interface contains symbols that launch preinstalled programs. BTest-1 contains Mozilla as a browser, the drawing and experimenting environment called eToys, AbiWord for word processing, a type of memory game, and TamTam to experiment with sounds, melodies, and rhythms [2]. As soon as you have clicked on the image of a musical instrument, you can use the keyboard as though it were a piano to create sounds. This well designed music program also provides percussion accompaniment for your own compositions. In the future, the software package will also include a flash player and a multimedia/e-book reader.
The final version of the OLPC will probably also contain a variant of the Logo programming language developed by Seymour Papert. This concept is designed to allow young children to experiment and gather their first programming experience. The eToys environment is better for older pupils, while teenagers can work with Python.
EToys is closely linked to Squeak, a dialect of the object-oriented programming language called Smalltalk. Teachers, psychologists, and education theorists not only in the US, but in numerous projects in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria are looking into the possibilities that this open-source development environment offers in math and natural science classes. The name eToys, which is often used as synonymously with Squeak, designates an interface designed especially for children to allow elementary school pupils access to this programming language. It is very easy for them to animate objects they have drawn themselves and observe how the objects behave on the screen. In the process, they begin dealing with physics concepts of velocity and acceleration while they are playing.
Currently, the developers are working on a journal function they later want to integrate in AbiWord as an editor. Pupils would then be able to track their own steps in the journal. They would be able to find, for instance, a text they were working on yesterday morning by looking through their journal for that time. The journal would thereby make it unnecessary for users to select a folder for files to be stored in. Furthermore, the XO will also contain a chat and e-mail client.
The developers have uploaded numerous videos to such video stream websites as YouTube to present the look and feel of Sugar and the currently available applications. If you have VMware or QEMU on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux computer, you can even test drive Sugar yourself. The developers also offer free images of the current stock of software including instruction manuals [3].
Definitely only for kids
To make it less attractive to steal individual laptops and, in particular, to prevent contaminants from spreading across networked XOs as quick as lightning, the OLPC's officer for security issues recently presented the security concept called Bitfrost [4]. The concept came too late for BTest-2 so that we could not have a look at it.
We do know that Bitfrost prevents the XO from being used until it is activated. The codes for activation are found on a USB stick provided to the school and used in the local OLPC server. Once the unit has been activated and booted for the first time, the system creates a key pair consisting of the name of the child and an image taken of it. The child then has a digital identity. Local anti-theft servers will then regularly query the laptops, and the OLPC will be able to shut down the XO if an improper ID is detected.
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In TamTam, you can pick a musical instrument and play it via the keyboard with rhythm accompaniment if desired.
The software used on the XO is designed to allow children to change it to suit their needs. External backups and data recovery are therefore part of the security concept. Open systems are not supposed to have secret security protection; rather, users are to have as much control as possible – even if they cannot read. In other words, prompting the user with questions like "Do you really want to launch this program?" is not an option.
For administrators in the business world, allowing children to change program lines, see the code, and play around in Python would be a nightmare, but Bitfrost takes that into consideration by strictly controlling what an application is allowed to do every time the system performs an action. For instance, the kernel and the OS in the NAND flash memory remained unchanged. Some applications can only read, while others can only write and edit. Applications that are not essential for a current operation are only allotted 10 percent of the CPU. Documents that the user creates are not directly part of a file system; instead, a file memory service links to these documents.
Naturally, Bitfrost allows you to use your own software, but users are not allowed to change the preinstalled software. Users can sign their own programs with a "developer key." The official software updates will also consist only of signed applications.
Must-have or hype?
At present, not all of the software runs, the hardware still has the status of a prototype, and the XO has no security concept. In light of the shortcomings, the goal of having the laptop ready for serial production in 2007 seems very ambitious. After all, this would be the largest IT launch in history, and not even the staff at the OLPC expects it to run smoothly. On the other hand, even postponing the project by a few years would not be a catastrophe if the OLPC manages in the end to give millions of schoolchildren a chance to educate themselves in a way they could not before.
Since it was founded less than two years ago, the OLPC has gone further than many believed possible. Now, the project has reached a critical phase because the next few months will decide whether the XO is the real McCoy or just a bunch of hype. Once development of the XO is finished, interested countries will have to put their money where their mouths are and enter into purchase agreements for millions of XO laptops. The promises made by ministers up to now will be worth nothing then.
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EToys offers pupils easy access to an experimental and design environment.
To make things worse, it is not clear whether Thailand is still willing to purchase a laptop after the elections in 2006. Similar question marks arise after the April-election in Nigeria. India also originally showed great interest in XO, but last year it dropped the project, saying that there were more efficient ways of promoting education than giving each pupil an OLPC laptop. India's withdrawal from the project was just as great a defeat as was China's. Negroponte's pressing-the-flesh at the highest political level is thus decisive for the rollout of the project, i.e. for the first round of deliveries.
In the midterm, the success of the OLPC will be measured in terms of whether the pilot project has gotten additional nations on board. If it is to succeed, the OLPC will have to show that any nation can afford the XO. As usual when it comes to costs, opinions differ. The OLPC estimates that it will cost some 30 US dollars to operate the laptop per annum, a price the organization says makes the laptop just as inexpensive for governments to operate as to purchase. That may even be true for Libya, but 175 million US dollars for a million laptops would leave a major hole in the budgets of Nigeria or Rwanda.
To make things worse, the OLPC has yet to officially explain what will happen with defective XO laptops in Africa, Asia, and South America – in other words, who will offer service and support and what additional costs the countries will incur. International financial service provider Merrill Lynch & Co. sees this area as one of the main weak points for the future of the project. The OLPC believes that the laptops will be used for five years, but if a large number of the notebooks are stacked up in the corner broken because of insufficient servicing, it will be hard to find additional countries to help the project reach its goal of 100 million XOs. And yet, Quanta's business plan is based on that figure. Merrill Lynch is more skeptical and has forecast only 40 million laptops by 2010.
In the long-term, the OLPC will have to prove that it can reach the education goals it has set for itself. Egypt has already shown how easy it is to run a program with good intentions into the wall. In 1994, Egypt's Education Ministry founded its Technology Development Center (TDC) to equip schools with computers, satellite television, and Internet connections. The project did not work because the technology was propped up on the current educational system. Access was regulated for pupils, and teachers could not cope with the videoconferencing system for training. A lot of money was invested in this IT project, but it did not do much good.
The OLPC has had a much more promising beginning because it focuses on children, not technology. Children can play with the available software and the system's open structure to learn at their own pace – dynamic learning instead of frontal instruction. In the OLPC project, teachers do not play such a key role as they did in Egypt. While the OLPC school server must be running for there to be Internet access and new e-books to be downloaded for use as textbooks, networking from one laptop to the other is possible without it. And as adults generally have a harder time learning new things than children do, this approach seems more promising. After all, teaching teachers how to work with computers is a challenge even in countries like Germany.
The project's critics argue that developing countries need other things more than laptops, which is certainly true for countries suffering from famine, war, and political turmoil. The XO laptop can only make a true contribution if there is a certain amount of infrastructure, a certain standard of living, and a willingness to fight corruption. The OLPC agrees, which is why the main parties interested in the project are from the G20 emerging countries. In addition, the OLPC does not believe it has a remedy for all of the world's problems; rather it sees itself as one of many nongovernmental organizations.
Competition
Even though it is an education project, the prospect of a market for 100 million laptops is drawing the attention of major players who have not yet gotten on board. Intel and Microsoft originally laughed about the project, with Bill Gates even commenting, "get a real laptop." But when Microsoft produced a revamped cell phone as its proposed alternative for countries that have ground to make up in the field of IT in schools and then recommended an ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), it was the critics of Microsoft who had the last laugh at the software vendor's knee-jerk reaction. After all, the UMPC has a short run time, is the very embodiment of poor ergonomics, and costs 1000 euros. It cannot compete with the XO.
As the OLPC project increasingly proved to be a success, people began to take it more seriously. Bill Gates himself jumped on the bandwagon in December when he announced that he wanted to have Windows on the XO. Negroponte was quick to respond winking that the SD slot had only been installed for Microsoft to begin with; after all, Windows needs more than a gigabyte of memory, whereas the XO only has 512 MB. Windows on the XO was dead on arrival.
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Sugar does not have a file manager, but rather a journal that lists changes and files in chronological order.
In contrast, Intel is taking the matter seriously. The chip manufacturer has come up with its own education project it calls World Ahead. The project's notebook was named Eduwise but is now called Classmate and is expected to cost 400 US dollars. Classmate is somewhat smaller than the XO with a seven-inch display (800 x 480, 133 dpi), one gigabyte of flash memory instead of a hard drive, and a Celeron M (900 MHz). The laptop is expected to run for four hours from the battery. Windows XP Embedded is the operating system used, but Linux will also be possible. Among others, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Nigeria have showed interest. Brazil has a two-pronged strategy and is currently testing both XOs and classmate prototypes. Intel says that serial production has already begun.
Intel will be financing its World Ahead program with a total of one billion dollars over the next few years. The goal is to bring nations closer to current technology and high-speed Internet access as well as to provide training for teachers and schoolchildren. The company has not, however, explained how the money would be distributed specifically and what the nations will have to pay for themselves.
As the example of Intel shows, the OLPC is obviously motivating companies with great assets to help improve the lot of countries with insufficient IT infrastructure. These developments are positive as long as they are coupled to an educational program and are not merely intended to pour hardware over these countries as from a cornucopia. These projects cannot be compared to others like India's Simputer or China's Longmeng with Godson processors, which are currently not viable. They, too, wish to bring the digital world to areas not currently covered, but their focus is purely commercial.
Conclusions
Those behind One Laptop per Child, especially Nicholas Negroponte, are apparently pulling the right strings. This education project aims to provide as many schoolchildren as possible in developing and emerging nations with the most inexpensive laptops available. The project has gone an incredibly long way in a short time. Despite all the obstacles, criticism, and unanswered questions, the OLPC has the potential to bring a large number of people into contact with modern forms of communication and impart knowledge. The XO laptops already shipped out are a clear sign of what can be done when visionaries, global firms, and international political organizations work together.
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When it comes to education, the OLPC has learned from the mistakes made in other projects, especially when new technology becomes the responsibility of teachers. OLPC board member Michail Bletsas recently stated in an interview on the Austrian radio during the 3GSM, "I believe it is a cost-efficient way of effecting change within the educational sector by getting children to teach themselves something instead of basing everything on the traditional approach of building schools and training teachers – which can take generations." For a purchase price of 175 US dollars, the OLPC has come up with a laptop and a user interface that schoolchildren in industrial countries would also benefit from. In addition, the little computer is full of innovations: the dual-mode display works indoors and in broad daylight, and no other notebook offers mesh networking.
The next few steps will determine the success of the project. The XO laptop and its software will have to be made ready for serial production, and purchase agreements will have to be signed with pilot states for millions of laptops. The discussions about running XO laptops with Windows and selling machines to U.S. schools have little to do with an educational project for developing countries. This shows the enormous difficulties OLPC has in getting sufficient orders. The project seems to be at a crucial point. The future only looks bright for OLPC if the organisation manages to maintain the pace ist has shown during the last two years. (translated by Craig Morris) / (jr)
Literatur
| [1] Guido R. Hiertz, Funk-Maschen, Standard für WLAN-Mesh-Netze erreichen Entwurfsstatus, c't 5/07, S. 208 |
| [2] TamTam (tamtam4olpc.wordpress.com) |
| [3] Sugar-Emulation (wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation) |
| [4] Bitfrost (dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=security;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=bitfrost.txt) |
| [5] developer blog (planet.laptop.org) |
| [6] OLPC portal site (www.laptop.org) and Wiki (wiki.laptop.org) |
| [7] well-informed blog (www.olpcnews.com) |
| [8] Video demo Sugar (www.ivr-usability.com/olpc/olpc.html) |
