Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 21st May 2007 13:40 UTC, submitted by Laurence
Chip-maker Intel "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine the USD 100 laptop initiative, according to its founder Nicholas Negroponte. He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate - below cost to drive him out of markets. Professor Negroponte, who aims to distribute millions of laptops to kids in developing countries, said Intel had hurt his mission "enormously".
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Member since:
2005-08-28
Well, from what I can tell it looks like the Classmate PC is a stripped-down conventional laptop rather than a totally new design like the OLPC (for better or worse). There's no interesting display, a tiny touchpad, a much more power-hungry processor (which, still, will go over fine in second-world countries), and they don't mention any of the wireless mesh. I believe the projected cost of the Classmate PC is still $250, which is a somewhat significant increase over the $175 XO.
Other than that, they are pretty similar. I don't know about Negroponte yelling at them for this; it seems like the OLPC still has its own considerable appeal for more rural markets, provided they get the human-power charger working.
As for software, both of them seem to be relying on local educators and the community in that country to provide targeted and appropriate content for the children.
This is my main worry for both of them: The OLPC in particular is still finalizing and working the kinks out of its hardware, and they've hit the magical trip-point where they're going to start producing these things... Where is the content? If these are educational devices you need time to write the educational software and activities.
I haven't seen much said about any advance copies being sent out to governments interested in purchasing these laptops so their educational professionals can create software for them. No, they're already planning on shipping en masse.
Edited 2007-05-21 15:39