Tossing aside its iconic
green-and-white laptop with its distinctive antennas, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is
pursuing a smaller 2.0 version, scheduled for release in 2010, in which dual touch
screens will replace the keypad. The new version will have lower power
consumption and a $75 price–a figure that OLPC claims is achievable despite the
fact that the current model, the XO, sells for nearly double the sum mentioned
in its “$100 laptop” moniker.
With its hinged
dual display, the new version could be used as a book, as a laptop with a
touch-screen keypad, or as one continuous display when folded flat. “The
display is going to get better and better, and it’s key to the next
generation,” Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, said yesterday at a
launch event at the MIT Media Lab.
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The redesign is OLPC’s
latest effort to revitalize global adoption of its machines. Last week, OLPC announced
that the current version will soon have the option of running on Microsoft Windows;
previously, the machines only ran on the GNU/Linux operating system, plus a
custom interface called Sugar that emphasizes collaboration among children.
With the addition of Windows, OLPC hopes to boost sales to countries, such as
Egypt, that already use Windows software in schools.
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Pixel Qi, the display-technology
startup founded by former OLPC chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen,
will collaborate in the development of the new computer. Its smaller size will
make the laptops easier for children to carry than the previous, larger
version, Negroponte said yesterday. And despite the smaller size, the display
will be larger–when both screens are used–than the one on the current
version. Because the machine will have no keypad, there will be fewer
mechanical parts to break. And whereas the current XO consumes only two to four
watts–one-tenth of the amount consumed by a conventional laptop–the
next-generation version will use as little as one watt.
But until the new machine comes
online, the existing XO will continue to be sold. Only about 600,000 hard
orders have come in–a far cry from the 100 million that, two years ago,
Negroponte said he was hoping to obtain by 2008. And last week’s announcement
that the XO will have the option of using Windows or the existing Linux-based
operating system has led to some debate among education officials. Yesterday,
Oscar Becerra, a Peruvian education ministry official who directs the OLPC deployment under
way there, says that he sees little value in adding Windows for computers in
primary schools.
The extra cost of $10 for the
Windows version is not trivial, he says: “If I have 10 dollars, I will decide
what to do with it.” Right now, Becerra is scrambling to find funds to buy
thousands of small solar-powered rechargers–at $20 each–for machines that he
is deploying to villages that lack electricity.
Some open-source
software advocates see an additional high cost of adding Windows. Richard
Stallman, a pioneer of the GNU operating system and founder of the Free Software Foundation, says
that he is now motivated to try to ignite grassroots opposition. “It’s an issue
of freedom versus power,” he said in a telephone interview from Taiwan.
“Proprietary software is under the power of its developer, and it puts the user
under the power of the developer. This is like handing out samples of an
addictive drug–not something that schools ought to do.”
But executives of
OLPC and other observers defend the action, noting that since the OLPC
educational software platform, known as Sugar, will now run on Windows, the
move will promote OLPC’s mission far more widely. “The open-source community
continues writing software for the Sugar interface,” Charles Kane, OLPC’s
new president, said yesterday. “There is a community in the Linux world that
continues to contribute to the ongoing success of this.” But, he added, with
the existing XOs, “we’re trying to make a transition in a form that makes us
successful in the marketplace.”