[geeks] OLPCs for sale...

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:50:46AM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
> >Date: 2007/11/13 Tue AM 02:10:24 CST
> >To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> >Subject: Re: [geeks] OLPCs for sale...
> 
> >> Pay $399 + $24.95 for S/H and buy two "$100 Laptops" -
> >
> >Two $100 products, together, for $400?  That's a hell of a markup.
> 
> I think you failed to properly parse the quotes ;^)

The unit was mistakenly called the $100 laptop because Negroponte 
wanted to make them for $100 as a non profit operation. His plan
was to get people to donate time and materials to the project so
that they could be given out to poor children who had no hope of
buying one on their own.

The offical name of the project is "one laptop per child".

IF (I know, big if) he had desinged the laptop with a strict
limitations on its capabilites and made enough of them, they
could be made within the target of $100 a unit. 

The $100 does not include packaging and shipping which could
add significantly to the price too.

Both India and China have their own intiatives to make laptops
for far less. The Indian project is to make one for around $15,
using simpler technology and donated parts and manufacturing
facilities.

Considering how few the OLPC group is making, and how bloated
their design is, $200 per laptop is pretty good. 

The idea behind they "buy two, get one" initiative is to
get geeks to buy them because sponsorship and acceptance
is lagging far behind their target.

IMHO, they were designed without taking into considerations
the cultural requirments of their target audience.  

> BTW, I got my Asus EEE yesterday, it's pretty good.

Not much difference between this and the OLPC, except that
ASUS designed them to make momey on them and the price 
reflects the much smaller production runs and the markup
of the retail channel. 


> I am suprised that this unit has a fan, the only moving part of the unit.

Been there, done that. Adding a fan was a cheap way of using a cheaper
processor, less agressive power managment, etc. When I was building
such devices, I found that one manufacturer of processors lied about 
the heat output and and we needed to have both a processor fan and a
case fan. Moving to different (more expensive), or slower (less price,
less power, less function) processor and semiconductor memory would have
removed the need for the fans.

Our first prototype was built in the fall of 2003 and large semiconductor
RAM was still expensive. To keep the per unit cost (in quantities of 10 million)
under $100, we had to limit it to 64 meg of non volitle RAM, now it
would be 4 or 8 gig.

You can make a pretty decent laptop of what's in an iPod Nano with a
better screen and it would not need a fan. The problem with doing so is
that it won't play videos, which is what most people would want them
for. 

>From a different point of view, the fact that the OLPC can play videos
in general and p*rn in specific make it undesirable in many places. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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