OLPC Struggles To Realize Ambitious Vision

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The One Laptop Per Child effort, for many reasons, is stalling and things don’t look like they are going to turn around anytime soon without something major happening.

Negroponte had initially hoped that mass production in quantities of 5 million to 15 million would begin about a year ago, and that by the end of 2007, 100 million to 150 million laptops would be produced. However, current plans call for production of only about 300,000 laptops this year, reaching 1 million by the end of next year.
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I think it's unfortunate, but I knew it was going to happen. I agree with the Intel guy a couple months back, when he called the OLPC a "gadget". It's not useful to your average person. It's a noble project, but I don't think the solution to the third world's problems lie in giving them all free laptops, and with better choices around (the Asus EEEPC for instance) for customers in developed countries, there's no market there. I think they were doomed to fail, unfortunately.
 
I am seeing advertisements for them everywhere now. I never thought I would see a linux based laptop being advertised on tv. As far as success goes... well every project has lofty goals, just look at the itanic(couldn't resist).
 
I think they should have made the olpc easier for anyone to buy to raise money for the project. They also should have started the donate one get one program earlier or maybe a preorder system. I know a lot of people who really wanted one. Of course they thought it would be a $100 laptop vs $200, so the olpc is in EEEPC territory if you get one through the donate one get one program.
 
The project suffered a lot of problems.
They were definitely not focused enough. Requirements were kinda vague, and no one seems to have a clear idea of what needs to be on there.
Also, people seem to got the idea that we should teach the kids to program, and made the UI largely out of python. The Geode chip in there runs at <=500MHz without a L2 cache. How are you going to make a python interpreter that would work at such a low spec machine is beyond me.

In comparison, although the EeePC is both faster and has more RAM, I won't be surprised that if need be, you can use that distro on the OLPC XO and it would run much better than the crap that was on the OLPC. Their dev images were alarmingly sluggish.
 
Who cares? There's plenty of damn American kids without proper education in our country, let alone a 3rd world country. Did America need a damn PC to educate children? To build a great country? No. Asking people to donate $200 so someone in a 3rd world country can have a laptop is ridiculous, how about food and running water first?
 
lathode said:
Who cares? There's plenty of damn American kids without proper education in our country, let alone a 3rd world country. Did America need a damn PC to educate children? To build a great country? No. Asking people to donate $200 so someone in a 3rd world country can have a laptop is ridiculous, how about food and running water first?
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You are forgetting that, with the extreme lack of good education in third-world countries (it's nothing compared to ours if you think our's is bad), the Internet may be those children's only hope of learning about the world.
 
HOCP4ME said:
You are forgetting that, with the extreme lack of good education in third-world countries (it's nothing compared to ours if you think our's is bad), the Internet may be those children's only hope of learning about the world.
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I don't think the internet is the best way to learn. It is the best way to scam, though.

I agree with thinking globally, but acting locally. There are kids in the US in school districts that don't have so much as a book. I'd rather do something about that first.

Giving PC's to people who may not have the bare minimum sounds dumb also. A laptop is something that you worry about AFTER you have your basic necessities taken care of.

Besides, how are they going to get connectivity?

Sorry, but tech is not the solution to the world's problems, IHMO. It may solve some problems, but it requires a very well defined environment in which to be useful.
 
lathode said:
Who cares? There's plenty of damn American kids without proper education in our country, let alone a 3rd world country. Did America need a damn PC to educate children? To build a great country? No. Asking people to donate $200 so someone in a 3rd world country can have a laptop is ridiculous, how about food and running water first?
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QFT. There are plenty of kids here at home that are in need of things more essential than a damn computer, certainly in places like Africa. If I barely care about people I've never met starving to death or dying of AIDS, why the hell would I drop $200 on a laptop so they can look at porn? If I were to donate money, it would first go to kids in our country, then to those other countries for essentials like food, medicine, and education. It's as if they are trying to repair the foundation of a house that's on fire.:rolleyes:

I like the idea of a cheap basic laptop, especially for purchase/use by developing educational institutions, but the thought of shelling out $ to donate them just seems silly to me.
 
This may sound selfish, but why try to educate other nations? So America can be taken over when they are a super-power?
 
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