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XO laptop is fun for child's play

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OLPC

The hardest thing about learning to use the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project's XO notebook PC is finding the right way to twist its antenna ears and open the display. Once you can see the screen, just follow the icons to write a note, snap a photo, or compose a tune.

OLPC invited analysts and reporters to play with the B2 version of its computers during a press conference at its Cambridge, Massachusetts, offices on Thursday. The group plans to begin mass production in September despite announcing it will now charge $175 for each of what had been the ballyhooed "hundred-dollar laptops."
That price is still far below the $500 price tag on the most basic commercial notebook in U.S. retail shops, a discount that OLPC hopes will allow developing nations to buy XO laptops in mass quantities and supply them to rural school children.

With its curved surfaces, bright green plastic shell, and puppy-ear WiFi antennas, the physical design of the XO is easy to carry. OLPC President Walter Bender held his 3-pound XO aloft as he spoke to reporters, his fingers wrapped around the laptop's integrated suitcase-type handle.

Even generating electricity for this laptop feels like a game.

Full Story.



Also:

Nicholas Negroponte knew he would need a lot of help. When the former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab announced in 2005 the idea of making $100 laptops for millions of children in the poorest nations, his support group consisted of a couple of professors in cardigans. The project was ambitious: This machine was not a knockoff of a Dell or an Apple but a complete rethink, from the motherboard to the escape key.

His solution was to open every aspect of the product's development and design to gearheads around the world who wanted to pitch in. Negroponte eventually negotiated formal agreements with designers and suppliers. But at the start he envisioned a wiki undertaking and set up a sprawling Web site (wiki.laptop.org) with dozens of pages dedicated to the laptop's every detail--its goals and technical specs, downloads of the latest software and problems with the latest prototypes. Wild ideas, practical applications, skin-peeling criticism--it's all part of the process. A loosely connected alliance of staffers, suppliers and volunteers work out the kinks. "There would be no way to launch and ramp in any way other than open and viral," Negroponte says in an e-mail exchange from Taiwan, where he is dealing with manufacturing. "A command-and-control model, the way one runs an army, is not well suited for new ideas."

Negroponte is bound to get much of the credit or blame for the success or failure of this laptop.

The Soul Of a New Laptop @ Forbes.


And:

Considering its USD100 price tag and the fact that the XO laptop is intended to be used around the world in drastically different environments, the physical design of the laptop is extremely important. Specifically, it must be both durable and power efficient.

The laptop must be moisture resistant, including a rubber membrane keyboard and touchpad. It must also be shock resistant, which is why no spinning media exists. It uses a flash device for mass storage (1024MB NAND flash).

The AMD Geode LX processor was selected due to its feature integration (graphics processor) and low power requirements (1.3W is typical at 433MHz). A number of important peripherals are also included, such as a 7.5-inch dual-mode thin film transistor (TFT) display, a 640x480 resolution video camera, an Analog Devices stereo sound chip, and even an 802.11b/g compatible wireless Ethernet chipset from Marvel. The wireless device enables mesh networking between laptops for information sharing and cooperation.

Finally, a fully enclosed battery pack provides between 16.5 and 22 watt-hours of operation (depending upon cell technology). Because batteries are expendable, power management is critical. A minimum of 2,000 charge/discharge cycles are required. The XO laptop can also use other power sources, such as solar panels or car batteries.

What's most interesting about the XO laptop is the operating system and graphical environment. The OLPC initiative partnered with Red Hat Software to develop these components. The Linux 2.6 kernel and GNU software make up the operating system, but the graphical interface is called Sugar. It is a simplified graphical interface designed for children and the small screen provided by the XO laptop.

Application development is innovative as well. Applications, or activities as they're called in the XO laptop, are Python programs using GTK+. I'll discuss Sugar and Python programming for the XO laptop later in this article.

Sugar, the XO laptop, and One Laptop per Child @ IBM.


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