One laptop per child
 

http://www.xogiving.org/

Well, I am being somewhat tongue in cheek, but for about the same price as an N800 you can buy 2 OLTPs, one for you and one for a child in a developing country. Oh, and you also get a tax receipt for the donated computer.

I have never seen an OLTP but the specs look pretty interesting so I think I will buy one.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Just buy an Asus Eee and give your money to a charity that actually does something with it besides buying SUVs for its "directors".

Poor kids don't need computers, they need good education.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Currently vaporware. Also not very creative and not suited for children.
Oh I would expect 'they need food' argument. That's another one often made. In fact OLPC could give them self-education which may be better. And the laptop may be even cheaper that the teacher. But yes, that's debatable and mostly off-topic.

I think those favoring asus eee (i.e. boring PC laptop design made of cheap components) may not know about some innovative hardware and software in OLPC - power management, durability, mesh networking, system designed for children. For me OLPC looks far more interesting than Asus.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Food is just about the last thing developing countries need.

And if you truly believe that a laptop can be educational on itself, we're through talking on this subject.

Re: One laptop per child
 

there is a long way between lack of food and lack of education.

there are places in the world where food is available, but where the access to information is poor, at best. hell, mobile phones are spreading like wildfire as they dont need wiring (that was sometimes stolen and sold as scrap copper), with "pay as you go", or whatever those "cash card" like plan are called, being the norm.

so say that you can put a server up, maybe at the community school or other public location. and it can connect to the mobile phone network to grab new material. that way you do not have to ship and store large stocks of books. books that often are out of date long before they reach the intended users.

a classical problem when aid systems where new, was that one would give a community a tractor. teach then how to use it, but never think about the infrastructure and knowledge needed to maintain it.

there is a lot of info that "we" take for granted that may never reach some parts of the world in the classical ways. the olpc may be one solution for that.

or like the classical saying goes:
give a man a fish and he is fed for a day.
teach him how to fish and he may never go hungry again.

Re: One laptop per child
 

This is a complicated issue. I am disabled because of very bad RSI due to using a computer since I was child (and from slaving away as a QA tester in my 20s).
I worry about our kids (in the US) who are using computers in school because no one is really looking deeply at the consequenses of introducing PCs to children. Thousands and thousands or adults have bad RSI, even places like MIT have an epidemic of this problem (RSI=carpal tunnel or tendonitis). It is the fastest growing work injury through out the US. But when people talk about giving a laptop to every child in an elementary school it never comes up. No planning considers health isssues for children.
So I think, poverty and education issues aside, there are complex issues related to technology and how it affects our minds and bodies. The idea of free PCs for poor children is just too simplistic. It sounds nice on the surface of the idea.

Lastly, I am all for doing anything to help people in 3rd world countries - so I am not against OLPC and applaud the OP for even caring about someone not in the 1st world. Too often we in the rich countries are too out of touch with the rest of humanity.

Re: One laptop per child
 

agreed. alas, it is sad that these kinds of ideas still exist. ultimately, the idea seeks to replace the teacher with the machine. i suppose in some cases this is preferable. in most cases, it is abhorrent.

Re: One laptop per child
 

hmmm.... :confused: ....

...or provide him with an MBA and he can own the fishing pole company. but that would require an education. :rolleyes:

Re: One laptop per child
 

not true. Maine and WA have piloted 1-to-1 programs in the States. Health issues (among others) have been a big issue for these school districts.

agreed. he does this (in his own way):
http://www.educationfutures.com/
read James Wertsch if you're interested in the impact of "tools" on thinking. amazing (and complicated stuff).

like Detroit? or Oakland? you must mean just east of Raleigh....

Re: One laptop per child
 

I think we should be careful not to write off the ability of IT to affect more than just IT in the developing world. Mobile phones were depicted as luxury items just a few years ago, but they're now staple products in the developing world, in fact the vast majority of mobile phone sales are in developing countries, and that's without any kind of subsidy or charity support.

There was one study quoted by the BBC which found that a poor country with a 10% higher penetration of mobile phones had an average GDP growth rate that was 0.6% higher. That sounds small, but it's a huge difference for a single technology to make to an entire country's economy. 0.6% is more than enough to cover the cost of the handsets (especially now that you can buy an unsubsidised unlocked handset for about US$40), so the presence of the phones must be making poor countries wealthier on average.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4331863.stm

I'm not saying cheap connected laptops will be as influential or successful as cheap mobile phones, but they might be, and we ought to at least give cheap laptops a chance. Absolutely nobody expected mobiles to be so successful in the world's poorest countries, but they have been.

Phones are not a replacement for food or jobs or water, but they make the obtaining of all of those things easier, cheap phones are oil in the cogs. Maybe cheap laptops could be too.




On another topic, the RSI issue is a very interesting point to raise. People seem to just ignore it because it's not a very sexy topic, and it reminds me very much of the way warnings about headphones on music players being too loud are just stonewalled by the tech community despite good evidence of the damage they do.

The EU actually has a law preventing music players and headphones from being louder than a certain level, but all it brings is derision from tech fans. The thing that annoys me is that the critics don't address how constant daily use of in-ear headphones is going to affect people 20 or 30 years down the line. It's especially worrying with more and more children using music players with headphones.

At least headphone technology has a bright hope of noise cancelling technology, but is anyone really doing anything mainstream to fight RSI?

Re: One laptop per child
 

It's cheaper to set up cell towers than string cable. That's one of the reasons for cells being more popular in 3rd world countries. At least that's what they told me in Oman.... I can tell you from first person experience, laptops don't teach kids anything other than getting around web filters, and that they don't make good dodge ball targets.

Re: One laptop per child
 

I suspect that it was probably a mistake to call it a 'laptop' because most of the critics have made the assumption that the OLPC XO is simply a cheaper version of a regular laptop - or if it isn't then it should be.

It really is nothing like a regular laptop, nor is the software much like the software on a laptop.

Perhaps the naysayers could take a longer look at the device and think outside of the laptop box. It could as well have been called 'One Library Per Child' or 'One Laboratory Per Child'.

Technically, I think that the OLPC XO contains some really interesting innovations that I hope can be migrated into our world. For example: the screen technology, the power management strategy, mesh networking, the physical robustness of the unit, its ease of field repair and the Sugar UI. Oh, and it is cheap to manufacture too.

Maybe it won't be successful for its intended purpose - I think and hope that it will be successful- but even if it fails we will all benefit from the innovations that the OLPC has made.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Just to keep it in the same thread -
There are some pics of the OLPC versus the N800 at:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/conte...0252/173/1/16/

Re: One laptop per child
 

OLPC is enjoying sporadic success (see article linked below). I hope it does very well! Linux can use the exposure, and this device helps level the playing field for people traditionally relegated to a serving class.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html

Re: One laptop per child
 

you're very, very wrong on the price. they are $400, you get one, an african gets one. so you could get 2 n800's for the price of one xo laptop. get a clue.

Re: One laptop per child
 

There is no call for insulting posts like yours, eleseur. You've been reported.

Re: One laptop per child
 

I decided in November to buy an XO laptop through the "give 1 get 1" program and it arrived on Dec 15th. It's an interesting device. I have been parading it around town trying to drum up support for the project before the Dec 31st deadline. I have gotten about a dozen people to buy one for themselves or the child in their life. Few, if any, are Linuxheads or gadgeteers.

Adults seem to have problems with the Sugar interface (no "desktop", "windows", "folders" etc), but kids just focus on the activities and don't want to give the laptop back. The track pad is the only hardware problem (it needs recalibrating every so often but will be fixed in next firmware).

This is definitely not a consumer gadget, at least not without software modifications. I've installed Adobe Flash and Helix media player but for now I will leave the Sugar interface in place. My guess is that people will get other distros running on this very soon.

I bought a 770 two years ago ($350 + $50 MMC) because I thought it might be a cool, hackable device that ran Linux and I wanted to vote with my dollars to encourage development in that space, i.e. handheld tablets.

I bought an XO laptop ($400) because I thought it might be a cool, hackable device that ran Linux and I wanted to vote with my dollars to encourage development in that space, i.e. durable low-cost computing to help ease the global digital divide.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Well put, Alaska.

Re: One laptop per child
 

Hmmm, must be in a different town. :D

Re: One laptop per child
 

Truly in the giving spirit of Christmas!
Posts like this by peeps that do not know the facts are almost laughable.
When the thread was started the N800 was still way up in price. Even now it only occasionally drops to $200 or below.
Note also that there are tax implications for those of us who make enough to write things off, so the $200 donated laptop would likely put a much smaller dent in our pockets.