One Laptop Per Child's annual "Give One, Get One" program is on!
The annual One Laptop Per Child "Give One, Get One" program has begun again, this time under the auspices of Amazon (which will greatly simplify ordering!). The deal is that you can either give a child in the developing a world outright for $199, or for $399, you can get a second one for a kid in your life.
I'm a huge fan of the OLPC XO1 -- it's a superb piece of hardware and a brilliant piece of pedagogy besides. My experiences working with kids on community-initiated sustainable development projects in the developing world lead me to believe that the poorest kids in the world stand to benefit enormously from getting one of these hackable, extendable devices in their hands.
The OLPC organization hasn't been without problems -- it's hard to imagine how something this ambitious would get everything right the first time -- but I have always been (and I remain) a staunch supporter of the project. I'll be ordering one for my daughter to play with when she gets a little older.
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I got one last year - one of the best purchases I ever made. The battery lasts forever (8-10 hours) when I'm doing plain text writing using nano, or playing nethack in terminal with the back light off. Summer evenings chilling on the patio with a laptop that I could see clearly with the sun over my shoulder, and didn't heat up my lap, where a pleasure.
I highly recommend these either for yourself, or as a holiday gift this year.
> The OLPC organization hasn't been without problems -- it's hard to
> imagine how something this ambitious would get everything right the first time
The sentence above misrepresents the situation. What's _really_ difficult to imagine is how an idea this simple could get so much WRONG the first time.
For example: The decision to take a 'Low cost machine that uses creative programming and hardware design to build an innovative platform for learning' for third-world prices and switch to Windows XP. I use XP every day, this isn't an 'XP is teh suk' post, but the switch to this alienated so many of the programmers who did so much to build the terribly clever and useful Sugar setup (with built in mesh networking, collaboration, etc) was devastating. The machines now cost twice as much as originally anticipated, the software doesn't do what it used to, and the core constituency of "I'll buy a pair, one for someone in Africa and one for me" linux nerds has been alienated with the efficiency of a pretty girl at a Star Trek convention.
I've moved to the skeptical group, and this side of the room seems pretty crowded now.
I had a look at Amazon UK this morning and the offer is £275 in our anglopesos, but they one available and one second-hand. That was quick.
I lost interest in this program after reading they deployed ONE support person in Africa.
Sort of a great idea (in the "To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" mode of thinking anyway). My great fear is that mass deployment of these types of devices will move child/slave labor from industry to information by reducing the infrastructure costs.
I'm really frustrated that to buy one in a non third world nation it costs double and one is donated. While that's a good idea, I work in an inner city school. Some of my students live in nearly third world conditions themselves and almost all of them are in poverty. I'd love to get one laptop per child, but ours would cost double.
They will need luck this year to sell more than 10 OLPC like this, with all the bad Public Relation (Microsoft...) they made at the beginning of 2008, and the market saturated with really nice netbooks.
I bought these for my kids last time around. They like them, and the newer software builds have the mesh up and working (still don't have all the hardware completely perfect, though - the three panel mouse is still only live on one panel).
But don't buy this thinking you'll use it for yourself unless you have dainty, childlike hands. It's been ergonomically pessimized for normal adults, so that parents won't steal them from their children. For hulking brutes like myself, typing on the XO1 keyboard is damn near crippling.
--Charlie
OK. It costs about 40 a month for the wireless carrier for my government laptop. The site says these OLPC things are wireless. What carrier? How much? How is some poor family in Africa supposed to afford monthly carrier charges? Is this company going to provide connectivity for free? How is a wireless laptop supposed to work in the backwoods of a continent where frequently only satellite phones operate? Who is providing technical support?
It would be nice if the site answered some of these questions. With a due respect to Cory, I find the lack of information- well, suspicious.
Crimeshark: google "olpc mesh zeroconf"
Yeah... I hope they do better than last year. Ours was out of commission for over three months while I tried to get it fixed. (We had one of the early ones with the CMOS battery issue.) I didn't even want it fixed for free! I'd have been happy to pay for it, but they had no infrastructure set up to do that. Or to help figure out what the heck they'd done with it after I sent it to them. (At one point, they listed me as having requested a refund. No! Bad customer service!)
The product itself is just fine. My daughter likes her laptop. I've even been known to use it with a USB keyboard and a thumb drive. (Shh, don't tell her that.) They did go to XP? Well, I'm sorry to hear that.
The idea is a good one. Unfortunately, the execution of the actual program has been... lacking.
I know these prices are the same from last Christmas, but weren't these supposed to be only $100? I mean, that was the catchy, concept, right?
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/gallery-of-photos-of.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/13/intel-and-mits-100-l.html
Can they still be had with Sugar? Or are they all XP? The displays on the ad seem to suggest Sugar... I was tempted by these last year (the display intrigues me) but I don't really know if I'd actually get much use out of it. Also, I wish they came in a different color.
...You know, what we haven't seen much of is people modding and tweaking the OLPC like they have the Eee's and the other mininotes.
Mine stopped working. Will turn on but won't boot up. Was working fine in the morning but wouldn't work that night after spending the day sitting on the nightstand.
I used it to read stuff in bed - I miss it.
At least they can sell this wonderfully arrogant gift to get food and clean water.
Not available for Canadians, it seems.
I didn't want your stupid laptop anyways!
*Cries*
If I could be confident I wasn't encouraging the foisting of proprietary software on vulnerable people I'd be interested. Unfortunately that boat has sailed. Can't imagine why they would want to burn up all that goodwill from people who would otherwise be their staunchest supporters.