01.26.08
review of super cheap $100 laptops dissapoints
There has been a lot fo talk about the one laptop per child initiative, or OLPC’s - when the news broke about $100 laptops - all kinds of people were talking about it. I remember talk about the possibility of buys one $200 and that would provide someone in a third world country with a laptop while you get one too. Well it looks as though the price has gone a bit (as of today around $230 - $300 perhaps) - and it seems that they have created a rugged design at a good price. Unfortunately some of operating issues may make these a failure.
In an article I found one guy talks about the OLPC and the necessity to upgrade the linux by command line in order to get it update and get on the internet:
They eventually had to reconfigure and upgrade the operating system, a complex process certainly not doable by a computer rookie. Pity the child in a remote Cambodian village trying to figure out this instruction from the OLPC Web site: “At your root prompt, type: olpc-update (build-no) where (build-no) is the name of the build you would like.”
Even worse, in order to save trees, the OLPC arrived with very few printed instructions. Instead the users were directed to a Web site for help, which would have been an insurmountable challenge if this was their only computer.
The article goes on the whine and moan that the intel version had a hard time with a word processor being while along with a few internet tabs. Of course there is no telling which writing software was being used in this little experiment, open office, microsoft’s bloated office or what. For that price and the ruggedness I would happily use a stripped down notetab lite to write with. Perhaps a second generation of these will be available and we will have a success story then.