Elonex One clones are available right now for about $75 USD in quantities over 100. They were released original well after the XO 1, and have about similar hardware. Originally they sold for about $300.
The XO seems to be about the only one defying Moore's :-) While the (heavily subsidized) pricepoint of $200 was totally amazing in 2007, right now it is rather unimpressive On 11/8/09, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <je...@merlintec.com> wrote: > Martin Langhoff wrote: >> Interesting. Though the challenge they have -- localising closed src >> binaries... to non ASCII-using locales -- is rather hard. > > The non ASCII is a complication, but changing binaries was very popular > in Brazil in the 1980s (the copyright law here was only extended to > software in 1987). A serious limitation of this project is that just > because the machines are openly being sold in a market in India (here in > Brazil too, but closer $100 than $12...) doesn't mean that there are no > legal issues. Nintendo is simply ignoring them as few units are sold > compared to normal PCs or modern videogame consoles. If this project is > a success and sales increase significantly, this could quickly change. > > It is odd that the article talks about expired patents as the reason for > lower prices. Most early machines weren't even patented: the original PC > (1981) wasn't, the PC AT (1984) had seven patents in all and the PS/2 > (1987) was the first one that IBM tried to seriously protect and it > backfired on them. The main factor for the low costs is Moore's law: you > can either get twice the transistors for the same price in 18 months or > the same transistors for about half the cost. > > The PC industry has mostly followed the first option while the OLPC was > explicitly created to take advantage of the decreasing costs curve > instead. Building in 2007 what was essentially a mid range laptop from > 1997 got you an entirely new price point. If we imagine the Famicom (the > current $12 computer) in 1985 with about $30 of electronics and the > Commodore Amiga with $300 in the same year, in 1997 eight cycles of > Moore's law would have passed and we would have $0.12 and $1.17 of > electronics in modern remakes of these machines. Except that packaging > and testing would be about the same for both options and the costs of > the case and keyboard would totally dominate the sales price. > > I guess the point of trying to make educational use of a $12 Famicom > (NES in the USA) instead of a more reasonable $13 Amiga is that the > first exists and is being sold right now. But like I said, the volumes > are not impressive. If the numbers are to be expanded to cover whole > poor countries then the investment that has to be made could certainly > support a little development, right? It has been done before: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV > > The reason why I said the Amiga was more "reasonable" is that the > PlayPower plan is to allow people to connect to the Internet. Even the > Commodore 64 has a new operating system (Contiki) that allows that in a > very limited way, but the Famicom is just too weak. > > I would love to see a project like this be a massive success, but don't > think the path they are taking is the best option. > > -- Jecel > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep