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On the one hand I applaud products like this for enabling deprived and impoverished kids round the world to become digitially connected.

But then I remember the actual purpose of the project is merely to get a generation of the world's poorest peoples hooked onto Western consumerism.

By giving them a taster for computing in the way the ZX Spectrum did so for many of my generation, Western billionaires have now it seems set their sights on exploiting another market whose monies would be better spent elsewhere.

Is it me, or would it not be wiser to spend the money used to purchase these devices on needier issues, such as infrastructure or medicine?

I understand that Negroponte wants to see his project succeed but to do so by gutting it and creating yet another windows laptop with no educational bias, no mesh networking and none of the advanced power management of the Linux version seems like a waste of an opportunity.

Just when the more technically literate people in this country and around the world are waking up to the power of Linux, Negroponte appears to be walking in the other direction.

I don't see the advantage to the kids in the developing world in attempting to create lock in for Microsoft.

Bill Gates said "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

What Negroponte is doing is giving these kids their Microsoft addiction and Microsoft are hoping to collect on that in the future.

I think Richard Stallman's take on this is interesting:



If people are losing interest in the XO, then maybe there are reasons for this and the current competition in the netbook market is one. The Economist has a good article on this



30% of these devices are sold with Linux, and though MSI have noted a high return rate Asus have not. If Linux is good enough for people here why should it not be good enough for those in the developing world?

Negroponte has helped though, whether he thinks so or not. Without the XO it seems unlikely that we would be seeing 拢200 netbooks here or anywhere. Negroponte's team showed the way, ASUS picked it up and then everyone joined the party.

"because the decision makers are often people who are comfortable with Windows - they're not comfortable with Linux"

In spite of his explanation, part of me is always going to wonder about backhanders in that type of decision making.

That said, as a free/opensource supporter, I don't see anything wrong in these machines being dual-boot. Part of me could even say that this choice gives the kids something else to explore.

Anyway, wherever it goes, I suspect and hope you are right in that in a way the mission has already succeeded.

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@scotbott, I think I can see where you are coming from and I can also be quite cynical about "western commercialism" but I do believe everyone should be able to access the same wealth of information we can.

(and one doesn't have to go for all the commercial stuff, eg. I'd take being sat with a group of friends with a pint playing traditional Irish jigs and reels on our instruments ahead of any commercial entertainment. Of course, the Internet support for this is fantastic, thousands of traditional melodies are documented in abc. I know I'm drifting a long way OT and onto my folk interests but in time, maybe some of these who gain access will be making say 1000s of traditional African melodies available to all. Who knows?)

How does it cost 拢275 when that is the price for two laptops?

OLPC is close to have delivered 1 million laptops to children in mostly developing countries. While Intel Atom based netbooks are nearly not at all available in any developing country and the Intel netbooks are mostly used by adults.

OLPC did not decide to work with Microsoft, it's Microsoft that decided to adapt a version of Windows XP for the OLPC laptop. The OLPC XO-1 is X86 based laptop, why would OLPC want to lock Microsoft out of making a version of Windows XP compatible with that laptop? I mean comon! OLPC is an open project, which means anyone can develop software for it, even Microsoft and Apple can if they want. It'd be just stupid to stop Microsoft from making Windows XP compatible with the XO-1's low memory and low processor speed just cause of some weird open-source fundamentalism.

Why would any politicians loose interest in the OLPC project, just about every single pilot school who are implementing OLPC are reporting it to be near complete and total successes every single time. That is before that the optimal learning strategies for laptops and the Internet in education have even been formulated yet. That is only while all those pilot schools are experimenting with the technology as pioneers. You need to send your reporters to the OLPC pilot schools and check for yourselves.

Also ask Intel how many Classmate computers are in the hands of children in the world. Probably close to none.

As he said they are all most indistructable so as tough as they are and being able to now duel boot would they not be sutable for space with such a low power consupion ect. I belive here lies a possibilaty, not looked into enuf.

Scotbot, your argument is compelling. The money spent on these, infact any computers could be spent on other areas of LEDCs. The computers do allow, in general improved education. This could improve many countries' workfore in the future. However a skilled workforce is of no use if the infrastructure is not there and even less use if many of the skilled people die of easily preventable diseases.

As for the XO, I think that maybe its time hasn't even come yet. I do however think that people are misunderstanding the purpose of it. There are many (not to be offensive here, but these people are computer enthusiasts, not the general public), who think one of the main purposes of the XO is to support Linux. This, as far as I can tell is NOT a major reason for the XO, but as Negroponte said, to make the laptop available to as many people as possible. Whatever does this, single or a combination is what is chosen.

Overall, the idea is brilliant, the concept too early and the principles misunderstood. The principle of the XO is not to promote Linux.

Negroponte comes from academia, a place where one is at liberty to invent and promote technologically new concepts. Typically, something coming out of a lab is picked up by a manufacturer, and taken into production if it shows promise, and can be shown to adhere to the industry rulebook, and make a profit.

As a developer with UNIX skills, I've bought and played with a couple of Linux products - using them effectively requires a new user to learn this operating system. But in today's commercial world, and even in much of academia, MS Windows skills are a necessity, not so much as a subset of computer skills, but because most students will use Windows when they progress into "the real world", both on the server and on the client side.

So, wanting to blanket the world with a laptop that does not teach children to use Windows at the same time as they learn computer skills is disingenuous. It combines an experimental facet of computer learning (the OLPC's operating system, completely unproven in teaching learning skills) with a device that would be useful if it taught more about the world that students must live in, in their future.

I equate Mr. Negroponte's efforts with what Al Gore does - solving problems that do exist with tools unfit for the purpose. Mr. Gore will have us believe we can save the earth by buying different cars and light bulbs, when in fact pushing back our pollution problem can only be done by not using cars and light bulbs at all; Mr. Negroponte teaches children to master computers they will not be using in their future life - nobody will be writing (affordable) brokerage applications and shopping carts for Linux on the OLPC, so in the OLPC one now introduces a need for children to completely relearn their computing skills, down the road.

Engaging Microsoft for this purpose would have been a good move, had it happened at the very beginning - Bill & Melinda Gates' foundation would have likely been amenable to funding a project where Microsoft's charitable involvement would have helped both that manufacturer and third world countries. Another very available source of funding is the World Bank, whose deep Third World development pockets are never exhausted.

Both Negroponte and Gore are examples of what happens when theoretical gurus are let loose on the world without the help of real world industry principals - it is nice to have ideas, but they have to be made to fit by industry integrators, and by financiers. Large egos and Nobel Prizes don't mean a thing in education, or in achieving affordable and long term useful solutions that benefit all, and are sustainable.

Menno Aartsen
Fredericksburg, VA

@maarsen "MS Windows skills are a necessity, not so much as a subset of computer skills, but because most students will use Windows when they progress into "the real world", both on the server and on the client side."

Why not word processing skills, spreadsheet skills, relational database skills, programming skills, etc.?

If I was an employer, I'd find the idea that someone only had Word, Excel, MS SQL Server, Visual C++ skills and were incapable of transferring these skills to say OOWriter, OOCalc, MySQL, GCC, etc. a little worrying.

Scotbot's comment is not only not compelling, it is extremely shallow. A decade ago one could understand such a viewpoint (as Bill Gates held then, expressed at the Digital Dividends conference in Oct. 2000); today it is not excusable (and Mr. Gates no longer holds it).

As a co-founder of HP's World e-Inclusion project, which worked with Mohammad Yunus and Youssou N'Dour among others, I have also had some interaction with Negroponte and especially with his former associates at MIT, and there is not doubt that the purpose of this project was just as it has been described. The Digital Divide is real, and in a different venue I could relate literally hundreds if not thousands of cases where access to computers has made a huge difference in the lives of developing world people.

The OLPC project was fatally flawed by two factors: 1) introducing hardware is more than making it - it takes channels, understanding of the customer, and ability to reach the customer and continually react; and 2) the new product will almost certainly cost more than the projections, and be late; the business plan has to allow for that. OLPC put the technology before the business plan. But this does not negate the tremendous potential for sophisticated IT in the lives of all people.

Those who assert that computers are only about crass consumerism and exploitation in the developing world have not educated themselves to the reality of that world (which conveys the consumerism far more effectively by TV, and has done so for years), and are condescending in the extreme to the right of the people to decide for themselves.

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