[geeks] OLPCs for sale...

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 10:03:01AM -0500, Dan Sikorski wrote:
> Are the laptops perfect and a solution to all of the world's problems?  
> No.  ....... If you think that OLPC is a cool idea, 
> and instead of just helping people survive, help educate them and expose 
> them to technology as well, donate to it.

Well, actually I did better than that. I and others had developed a
handheld X86 computer that could be produced in quantities of 10 million
for under $100. (estimated $85 for the hardware) We had written a
business plan to get funding to develop them as a handheld gaming
device. Selling 10,000 handheld computers at $250 cost (which is what we
would have had to charge for the quantity) is difficult. Selling 10
million hanheld gaming devices for $150-$200 retail is relativley easy.

Using them as the base device for all sorts of things, including a real $100
laptop would have been simple. They already had both USB host and client
ports (I was one of the first, if not the first to call them that),
and a place on the circuit board to add video ports, etc.

This was in the fall of 2003.

The device runs (I still have one of the prototypes) Linux, and would
have been "open". The only closed portion would have been a chip for
DRM (which included a per unit encryption key) for the game vendors
that demanded it. 

Unfortunately as good as I was at putting together a technology team,
a product and a business plan, I was bad at running a business and
building a business team. We had several offers for full and partial
funding, which were lost due to the business end of the team. 

If we had successeded, most likely everyone on this list that was
not invlovled in the beta testing would by now have one of these
devices, some would have had several, not just to play games, but
to "hack".

In the end the company crashed and burned which cost me and others
our savings, and in my case my health. It was a great education to
me and some of the others and we will be trying again.

I therefore think that I am qualified to comment about the OLPC and
it's design and implementation failings. Been there, done that.
Unlike the OLPC, I did not have MIT to fund me.

As an aside one of the deals we "blew" in Spring 2005 was to use our
technology to run PC games on cell phones. We had presented a demo of
DOS and other games running on a cell phone to a Korean company, but
never followed through on getting a contract. To this day, they don't
have any games on their cell phones. :-(

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/