OLPC Announces Buy-2-Get-1 XO Laptop Sale

theodp writes "Starting November 12, The One Laptop Per Child Project will sell its affordable XO laptop to Americans for a brief period of time, but there's a slight catch: U.S. buyers must purchase two computers — one for their own child and one for a child in the developing world — for a total cost of $399. 'Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried. So the laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August. The results were reassuringly positive.'"

Re:$100+$100 = $399?

[RuBLed]

You we're a little late [slashdot.org].

Although it is still off by around $23.

Re:$100+$100 = $399?

[malaire]

The "$100 laptop" costs currently $188 USD (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/15/0332225 [slashdot.org]). And according to the XO Giving FAQ (http://www.xogiving.org/faq.html [xogiving.org]) "$200 dollars is the bundled price to donate an XO laptop computer. This price includes the shipping cost."

Re:Emulator to try first?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure can! http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/10/1947225 [slashdot.org]

Re:$100+$100 = $399?

[this great guy]

I thought this was the $100 laptop?

You thought wrong. The laptop is now known as the XO-1 laptop (they have not been able to maintain the price within the original estimation, it is today priced at $188).

As a side note, IMHO the software development and integration efforts that are happening on the OLPC project are fantastic. All the companies involved in this project are providing their best engineers: Marvell (who made the wireless chip) have their guys developing the firmware often directly according to the feedback they get from the kernel developers, Red Hat is providing plenty of sw engineers (including Marcelo Tosati, who was the 2.4 kernel maintainer!), AMD and Quanta are working on the hardware platform (recently they made efforts to track the power consumption of every single chip in the laptop), etc. This is just incredible how fast the teams are able to progress in such a cooperative environment. This is a sharp contrast with what happens too often in the ordinary Linux world where cooperation is sometimes difficult or inexistent (e.g. kernel developers unable to obtain hardware specs, or hardware vendors attempting to provide some crappy binary drivers without involving the kernel community, etc).

I certainly expect a very high quality product to come out of this project, both on the hardware level and software level. Every single piece of chip or software has been optimized and fine-tuned to make the whole platform work as best as it can. This is going to be one of the best Linux laptop ever made. Just read their weekly updated news page to get a brief understanding of the technical achievements made possible in such an ultra-cooperative environment: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/News [laptop.org]

Re:Canadian Coins Too

[sayfawa]

Canadian and American coins have been of a similar size and colour for generations. In the 80's in Michigan they were pretty much interchangeable until the Canadian dollar's value dropped. Even vending machines and video games took Canadian coins back then.

What about Europe?

[UnHolier than ever]

Or the rest of the world for that matter. Are we not good enough to buy those? I can see the teen from a third world country who worked and saved his money for years to get one of those, only to be told "Sorry, you can't buy it! You need to be given it, and your government has chosen not to give one to you!"

Re:A certain irony...

[walt-sjc]

Despite your first comment, you really do miss the point.

You are not buying a $399 laptop. You are buying a $188 laptop and donating $211 to a charitable cause.

USD vs. other currencies

[DrYak]

Can someone post the USD v. whoever-is-making-is exchange rates comparing now and when the original target price was announced. I'd guess that might account for some of the $100->$200.

In november 2005, when it was first announced by Carlo Negroponte and Kofi Annan [wikipedia.org], it was hoped that it would cost around $100. Currently it is going to cost $188. That's an increase of +88%.

Quanta, the maker, is Taiwan-based. The local currency is the New Taiwan Dollar (NT$, TWD).
The initial $100 was at that time [x-rates.com] 3'358 NT$, and is currently [x-rates.com] 6'214 NT$, which is a ~ +85% increase.

Some may argue that the, because the NT$ isn't a strong currency, the $ may had repercussion that pulled it down allong. Given the fact that there's a lot of international collaboration going on behing the OLPC project, it won't be too far fetched to compare to other international currency for reference.

In Euro, the initial $100 corresponded in 2005 [x-rates.com] to 85.50 , and the current price [x-rates.com] of $188 is 136.25, which is only ~ +60% increase.

In Swiss francs (CHF), the price jumped from [x-rates.com] 131.10 SFrs to [x-rates.com] 223.70 SFrs, which is only ~ +70%.

In Japanese Yen (JPY), the price jumped from [x-rates.com] 11'844 Y to [x-rates.com] 21'619 Y, which is only ~ +82%.

So depending of who we take as a reference point, results do vary, BUT indeed we see that part of the prise increase may come from the dollar itself loosing its value.

What would be most interesting is to see potential buyers :
Brazil (BRL) : 221.00 to 345.28 thus ~ +56% (only)
(The only country from the OLPC's list whose currency history I managed to find... )

Or country that might be targeted (although not currently interested) :
India (INR) : 4'563 Rs to 7'588 Rs thus ~ +66% (only)
Thailand (THB) : 4'110 B to 6'048 B thus ~ +47% (only)

We definitely see a trend there : the price of the OLPC hasn't risen as much in developing countries as it had in the USA.

Thanks to Wikipedia and Google for the DATA.
Not that I am not an economist. Also I only calculated currency. Factoring the Purchasing power, or the duration of work given salaries in those countries, would be interesting too.

Re:$100+$100 = $399?

[jsight]

You thought wrong. The laptop is now known as the XO-1 laptop (they have not been able to maintain the price within the original estimation, it is today priced at $188).

The sad thing is that their homepage [laptop.org] still proudly lists the price as $100 in the title.

Re:Very dissapointed.

[cow ninja]

IMO, Americans could do with far more such selflessness these days.

Actually 70% of American households give at least $1800 per year, that is more than most countries.
http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/May/10-36789.html [state.gov]

According to this USA Today article Americans give more than twice of the next most charitable country.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-25-charitable_N.htm [usatoday.com]

Maybe EVERYONE could do with far more selflessness...

It's about access to knowledge

[js_sebastian]

This is an honest question: why do kids need laptops? Is there some fundamental problem in teaching today that can only be solved with computers?

It is a honest question and I will answer it as such. No, computers are not necessary for education. But children need access to knowledge. A laptop with wireless connectivity is only the cheapest way to do this in places where text books are too expensive for most people, there isn't much in the way of public libraries, and no one has computers let alone the internet at home. If they have textbooks loaded on the laptop, and can access the internet at school over wireless, they have access to knowledge.
Then they also can do fancy little physics experiments (i saw a XO tutorial on learning about gravitation using the built-in camera as a measurement instrument. Can't find the link but it seemed great), learn to program and be a geek, whatever, but the main thing is access to knowledge.

Re:A certain irony...

[nomadic]

The real Ayn Rand would have been perfectly fine with anyone doing whatever they want with their own money - it's the concept of others deciding to do something with your money without your approval that she'd have some difficulty.

No, you're ascribing mainline libertarian thought to Ayn Rand; she really did think altruism was evil, even if you were only using your own money.

Re:A certain irony...

[iamhassi]

"At $200 I might have been able to scrape up enough to buy my oldest one for Xmas,but at $399? I could just buy a much more powerful Dell."

Actually you could. Walmart has 1.0 GHz VIA C3 laptops for $398 [walmart.com] in stores or a 1.86 GHz Intel Celeron Acer Aspire for $428 [walmart.com] with 14" LCD, 512meg, 80gig HD and dvd-rom/cdrw with Vista.

Walmart was selling $400 laptops way back in 2005 [news.com], so to hear that someone's trying to sell a 433mhz, 1gig flash memory, 7.5" display laptop-sized device for $400 sounds a little nuts. Yes, I know half that is for charity, but I still pay $400 and get one laptop.