OLPC Unveils Impressive XO 2.0 Concept

Just when you thought Nicholas Negroponte's vision of "One Laptop Per Child" was history, OLPC is back and sexier looking than ever. This latest concept for the OLPC features a dual touchscreen interface, bridging the gap between traditional laptop and futuristic tablet. What makes it even more impressive is that Negroponte believes this is possible for only $75 by 2010.

Yes, the OLPC is back and better than ever with the OLPC XO 2.0 concept. Granted, currently this innovative laptop is nothing more than a brilliant idea and some CGI press photos ... but once again Mr. Negroponte managed to create some serious buzz around the idea of affordable laptops for children. There are no details about the technical specifications for OLPC XO 2.0 other than it's expected to be half the size of the current OLPC with a very interesting interface.

What really makes the OLPC XO 2.0 so interesting is the removal of a traditional keyboard in favor of the use of dual "indoor-and-sunlight" touchscreen displays similar to those currently being used on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Negroponte believes that a $20 price point per display is not out of the question if trends continue in terms of touchscreen technology and pricing. Even more ambitious is that the OLPC XO 2.0 is aiming for a target price of $75 per laptop.

If all goes according to Negroponte's plan, you can expect to see the OLPC XO 2.0 available to the public in 2010. In the meantime, the OLPC XO will be returning with the "Give One, Get One" program in August or September of this year.

Check out the full video over at LaptopMag.com

Check out our review of the original OLPC XO

 

LOL. First of all, as you stated, that laptop pictured is basically a figment of the imagination. Second of all, producing that at budget is, at current time, unrealistic. Third of all, I like how "government orders never materialized" ...meaning, most of the countries these things are destined for are having more pressing problems, like getting the kids food rather than laptops (thanks, dictatorial regimes!). I don't mind "Giving One, Getting One," but what you're getting is inferior to stuff that's coming out by Asus and MSI (and potentially Dell) ...so pass. I'm not buying an inferior product based on "feeling good."

 

"Ditto" all the way around, kamehame.

Still, I hope Mr. Negroponte keeps pushing his unrealistic dreams into the public eye. The OLPC is largely credited for giving rise to the original Asus Eee PC ... so maybe if Negroponte keeps motivating companies to make better, cheaper laptops it will lead to better things.

 

So by $75, they mean $199.99.

 

Yeah, I think Mr. Negroponte has underestimated . . . again. The current XO was supposed to be $100, but is almost double that.

OLPC has largely failed; many countries are wary of machines not using Windows. Intel's Classmate PC is much better.
At any rate, I'm not convinced these devices are the wisest way for developing countries to spend their money.

 

I had a similar thought when I first heard $75 was the target. But if you had told me in 2005 that there would be a 7-inch notebook with flash-based storage, an Intel processor, and WiFi for $350 by 2007 I would have questioned your sanity.

 

It would be good if they had a picture of a kid from Sudan in the middle of some high-tech control room with biometric readouts and holographic touch controls and also a huge laser gun. I say, if you're going to have fictional pictures, go all the way!

 

As long as it doesnt look like a green mean ET from outer space trying to sell itself for $200... I m all in.

 

If you aim for the what is possible then you will undoubtedly fail; Aim for the impossible and you may just end up with something new.

I doubt they will succeed in reaching the goal, but in aiming for it they might just encourage other manufactures to do the same.

 

honestly... the XO is one ugly machine...

with that said, 2.0 looks promising. something that looks good will attract normal consumers into buying it. but $75 is too ambitious. that looks like something that is $250 at least

 

it looks like a nintendo ds. i bet he got inspired by that i think the idea is pretty cool though. the only thing i would not like is the keyboard. i would not really like typing on a touch keyboard. i rather type on a physical keyboard. i would spend 75 on that just to play around with it.

 

I am sure the Asus Eee and MSI Wind would hit the so-called $75 by 2010 is you kept the components the same as today and you produced 10 million units.

 

Am i the only one that is really liking this new kind of laptop ? It takes some serious out of the box thinking to make this up and think you can sell it for a reasonable price. I really like the idea of a dual touchscreen laptop possibilities are endless just hope that they have invented some new technology for battery's by 2010 because this thing will use quite some watts with 2 displays.

 

My thoughts exactly.
Kids are starving, let`s give them "cheap" laptops...

 

Yes, you are probably the only one. As someone else said, typing on a touchscreen is for chumps. There's no tactile feedback and it would likely make touchtyping much more difficult. In addition, the screen would be difficult to keep clean and also touchscreens are not necessarily the most responsive things (as constructed currently). It looks clean and high-tech, which is the only positive. "Thinking out of the box" is nice, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore reality -- that's how businesses fail.

In addition, I have no idea how people think even $200 is realistic for that machine. You can't even get a touchscreen phone for $200. What makes you think two touchscreens will cost $200? OK, sure, you can say that you are extrapolating out for prices in 2010 or whatever, but I still don't buy it. Also, the power consumption will be ridiculous. Imagine that you not only have to power your screen ...but TWO screens 100% of the time you use a laptop. That kid better have access to a nuclear plant. At least he won't be cold; that thing is going to run at 130 degrees with that kind of battery work.

 

Nick Neg should go back to teaching students at MIT, but not about usability or media, but rather advertising and marketing. He's obviously good at pulling attention to a cause and product, I'll give him that.

 

Or he could work at Apple. LOL, zing!

 

They need food, not laptops.
Tim

 

they can sell the laptops for food

 

Capacitive touch high resolution panels with anti-wear treatments != $20 320x240 crappy DVD player screens.

 

Wouldn't it make much more sense for them to eat their kids for food and keep the laptops?

 

Nope, I'm with you. I would love to have this thing in class, looks great for note taking and actually comfortable to read textbooks on. Plus, if it was as easy to recharge as the original, it won't ever run out of power.

The OLPC started the market for ultra low cost laptops, I hope the XO 2.0 injects some much needed innovation into the tablet pc market too.

Personally, I'm not thinking of the XO 2.0 as a notebook, but more of a cross between a tablet PC and a Nokia N800-series type device.

 

Very nice , and if that is the XO 2.0 just think what consumers will get by 2010 .

But I'm not sure what 75$ would buy in 2010 ? a big mac ?

 

you can better give them some tools so they can make their own food. otherwise your throwing money in a endless blackhole

 

Am I the only person who sees this as reasonable? Moores law afterall, technology progresses at such a fast rate that even concept laptops like the XO 2.0 and Samsung one could easily be in production by early 2009, and by 2010 that technology used in them would probably be very cheap due to new technology flooding the market.

$75 does seem a little optimistic, but remember a top of the range graphics card costing hundreds of $$$ 2 years ago costs very little today, so it would make sense that the XO 2.0 in 2 years would be relatively cheap to produce, though like everyone else I kinda question why the developing world needs laptops instead of basic sanitation, basics first then lets go with these laptops.

 

I live in Argentina, a country where idiocracy has replaced democracy. A project like OLPC will help poor children have access to technology in their lives. It is irrelevant if the units cost $200 or $300. Kids will receive a useful learning tool and probably the whole public educational system will be have to be revised. We pay 35% national income tax, 21% national sales tax, 5% vehicle tax, 3.5% state gross income tax, 1.2% check tax, 1% asset tax, 44% agriculture tax, enourmous import duties, and the list goes on. In exchange we do not get reasonable justice, health, security, water, roads, electricity, infrastructure, etc. If OPLC gets the government to buy computers for poor kids, I am all for it. It would be nice to see them giving instead of taking. Obviously a corrupt government official will keep 10-15% for himself, but we are already so used to it that we do not even complain.

 

Am I the only one who thinks this looks way too better than most of our laptops?

 

Dude, wake up. If the GOVERNMENT buys computers for kids, where do you think they're getting the money from? People who whine for the GOVERNMENT to do things for them are the ones who cause all those taxes you're complaining about. That's one huge money transfer from people who work to people who don't. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem: demand that people pay their own and take part in the free market. Socialists suck hairy balls.

 

First, I am not socialist at all, quite the contrary. I just hate to pay 234829038490234 different taxes and still have to pay to send my kids to private school. I went to private school and private university because government education sucks big time. Europeans and Canadians are mostly socialists and AFAIK they are not doing that bad.

Second, if the government buys 100K laptops, they will be able to negotiate a great price, the merchandise will be duty and tax free, and there will not be any retailers in the supply chain adding their markup.

Third, the Ministry of Education has a fixed yearly budget and if they don´t spend part of it on OLPC, they will still end up spending it on some other useless thing. At least laptops for poor kids have a great ROI.

And last but not least, the parents of these children most definitely don´t have money to buy laptops at normal market prices ($900 for a 14" Celeron M420 512 MB RAM).

So please STFU and stop talking about a country you know absolutely nothing about.

 

Sure, I'll STFU. And meanwhile you can continue advocating for the government to buy kids laptops and then wonder why your taxes are going crazy and yet you can't even get a decent public school education. But at least you'll have a cheap laptop to write about the experience online.

 

Taxes are going to be a rip off anyways. Purchasing some cheap laptops is not going to change the budget. The insertion of technology in public schools will force the government to revise the whole learning process.

If poor working-class families ($500 per month salaries) composing 50% of our population have to buy $900 Celerons at retail stores, then their kids will continue being computer illiterate.

 

A laptop like that is an interesting product even if it wasn't ultra-low cost.

It's something like 2 large iPhones slapped together

 

Hah, dual touchscreens.

The kids are starving, but at least their laptops are keeping them interested

 

Well, in our case, the kids aren´t starving, except for some isolated cases. The families and schools just don´t have enough money for computers. A project like OLPC has huge scale, no middlemen, no duties or taxes. Those ingredients are enough to radically change the price point.

 

Here's a small hint: people say that about everything. Guess what? It all adds up. I love it when people say stuff like, "well, it'll ONLY cost $150 million, which is chump change." Oh, OK.

 

Let´s hear your proposal to getting laptops to poor families. I understand that your opinion is that they should go to retail stores and buy them there. Is that correct?

 

Yes. Shocking, isn't it?

 

Ok, let´s analyze the scenario you suggest.

A Sempron, 512MB, 40GB RAM, WinXP is the cheapest laptop you can buy here. It costs about $850 retail.

A family that makes $500 doesn´t have $850 to pay up front, so they need financing. They probably don't have a credit card, or if they do it is already maxed out thanks to the 35% inflation we have had during the last 12 months. BTW, the government says inflation is 9-12% so they don´t have to adjust salaries fairly.

If the father is lucky enough to have a registered job, he will have to ask for somebody to sign up as collateral. A non-government financial institution or the same retail store that sells the laptop charge 50-75% per year, since this is called a "personal credit" and not a credit-card purchase.

So after 24 months of paying, the laptop has cost that family approx $1700-2125. Assuming that the $500 is adjusted to $650 due to inflation, that takes it down to 2.6-3.3 salaries for a Sempron 512MB. For simplicity let´s average at 3 salaries.

How much is a poverty line salary in the US? Maybe $2000? 3 salaries = $6000. How viable is that in US terms?

Ok, now down to the craptop.
- You get a one year warranty. Extra warranty plan is a total rip off, so forget about it.
- The chasis is built using the cheapest plastic materials. Imagine an Inspiron 1100 in the hands of an 8 year old. Way too heavy for the kid to carry back and forth from home to school and it is not resistant enough.
- 100% certainty that it will get dropped at some point and it will have to be repaired. Start saving for a new motherboard or LCD costs.
- 4 cell battery. The battery lasts 1.5 hours the first day you use it. That means that either you have a couple of spares to cover the whole school day or you have a power socket at each bench.
- After 6 months and a minimum of 180x3=540 recharge cycles, battery time is about 1 hour. A year later the battery lasts 30 mins. In 18 months they still haven't finished paying for it and they already need a new battery/batteries which will cost a minimum of $150-200 each. That is, of course, if that specific battery model is still being imported.
- no liquid spill protection. Now why would you need that for kids?
- Spinning 40GB SATA 150 drive. No SSD. Good luck.
- DVD reader, CD read/writer, memory card reader. Useful for the backups you will need to make due to the lack of SSD.
- Wifi b/g without mesh. Now they can get that $25 monthly Internet subscription they always wanted. Oh, and a router. Wait! No landline or cable at home so how do we do that? Most poor people only have prepaid cell phones.
- The software is a vanilla XP with lots of really useful stuff for school. Trial antivirus, trial Office, trial RealPlayer, and so on.
- 1024x768 LCD that is designed only for interior use. Great for rural schools.
- If you are a masochist and want Vista "upgrade", you need to spend an extra $80 to get 2GB RAM and $150 for a sw license. Vista is more disk intensive so the battery will last less time too.
- The target family has at least 2 kids. They will have to share the machine which is doable at home, but not at school since they are not in the same grade. Forget about getting a laptop for each kid at retail price. There is no budget or credit for that.

ONE LAST TINY PROBLEM:
- The teacher does not have a computer. How does he/she lead the class?

Looking forward to your constructive comments and more wonderful brilliant solutions.

 

Here's another question for you, Einstein.

Since elementary and secondary education are a constitutional right here in my country, what happens with all the kids that can't buy laptops if you make them mandatory in the classroom?

 

Yes, compared to you I am Einstein.

Here's a response to you, chimpanzee. Since when are laptops equal to education? I mean, look at you: you have a laptop and yet you can't even figure out that basic question. Why would you make laptops "mandatory" if nobody can afford them? Do you think laptops or computers are mandatory in America, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter? Were you dropped on your head as a child? And then did a car run over your head?

Leave the sarcasm at home, son, you're not smart enough to be using it.

 

Nobody says laptops equal education. What experts are saying is that computers are a fantastic learning tool, that a standard laptop is not usable in a elementary school classroom, and that if they are purchased correctly they are affordable for mass distribution. They also say that in underdeveloped countries the only chance for many students to have one is if the governments pay for them.

 

OK, so what? Since kids can't afford something they don't need, then therefore the government should buy it for them? Excellent idea!!

 

United Nation´s opinion:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=17328&Cr=laptop&Cr1

Microsoft´s opinion:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-15MSOLPCPR.mspx

Intel´s opinion:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/com...6.asp?O=FPTOP&S=Training and e-Learning&A=ELR

I could spend some time looking for opinions from educators from South and Central America, Africa and Asia.

 

Uh, no offense, but you need to read what you post BEFORE you post it. I read the UN opinion, for example, and all it is is this guy gushing about how the price of technology is dropping and making things more affordable. By the way, let's say you found FIFTY opinions that say that computers are necessary for education: who would care? You and I both know that you can get a good education without computers -- how did people learn things before computers, OMGOMG?! I mean, if you really want to say that a computer is mandatory for education, then you'll just sound really stupid.

 

"Under the Memorandum of Understanding signed at the World Economic Forum by UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Kemal Dervis and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Chairman Nicholas Negroponte, the two organizations will work together to deliver new technology and learning resources to schools in the world's least developed countries (LDCs). "

Of course you can learn without a computer. That´s not the point. It´s about how and what you learn. We could always keep on teaching the same way it´s been done for the last thirty years, but it would be very mediocre, wouldn´t it?

Please understand I am talking about Argentina, not the US. I lived in Houston for 4 years during the 80s and went to public school there. When I came back to Argentina there was no way I could continue my education in a public school. The difference was enormous, and now it's even worse.

 

I don't understand why you think that learning with a computer is so much better than learning without a computer. And, basically, that's the bottom line to your argument, the reason that it's so important that the government buys laptops for kids. The U.S. doesn't "need" computers in classrooms -- it's nice, but still not necessary -- what makes you think that Argentina is any different? And like I said, if that's your thing, fine. But then don't complain about the taxes that you pay. After all, where do you think your fine government gets the money to do all these things that you and everyone else think is necessary?