Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
On Feb 20, 2013, at 1:34 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: 2) Has the production of the XO-4 begun? If not, when is it expected to start? We expect the production ramp (formal handover to the factory engineering team) to happen on March 15th. The first production run is currently scheduled for early April (as usual, is it hard to get those first orders). 3) What are the various options that will be offered with the XO-4? Possible configurations include: - Touchscreen or no touchscreen - Rubber membrane keyboard or mechanical keyboard - 1 GB of RAM or 2 GB of RAM (1 GB recommended) - 1 GHz or 1.2 GHz processor clock speed (1 GHz rec.) - 4 GB or 8 GB of solid state storage - 802.11b/g or 802.11a/b/g/n (11b/g rec.) Some options are strongly recommended as the alternative (while supported) incurs a non-trivial price increase. 4) What is the projected cost of the XO-4? In what quantity ? Please contact sa...@laptop.org with a quantity and they can estimate a price. 5) Will small orders (100 or more machines) still be considered for well thought-out projects? I don't know. Again, contact sa...@laptop.org The problem here, as always, is that the supply chain just doesn't work for small quantities. Regards, John ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
On 2/20/13, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Also, if you think of anything else people are likely to ask that isn't listed here, please include the question and, if you know it, the answer. Q. I thought this was (circa 2005) a $100 laptop whose price could only go down over time due to Moore's Law. A. When it was complete, it first turned out to be a $188(?) laptop. And the MINIMAL configuration model unit price STILL (2013) is something like that. Why? To figure this out, I'd start by asking what do the components cost, and what does manufacturing. If component costs were not falling, I'd ask if OLPC was raising the hardware base over time, rather than staying with the equivalents of the original components, if still available. Does holding the sticker price help reduce TCO over time, or is this a matter of aiming at the price point where incipient demand is greatest (affordably better user experience)? Q. I thought this was a machine for the world's poorest children. According to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments, as of January 2011, at which point there were roughly 2 million XOs units, the biggest deployments, accounting for over 3 of 4 machines, were in Uruguay (420,000 + 100,000 + 40,000) = 560,000 and Peru (290,000 + 580,000 + 110,000) = 980,000 And per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product , the (non-PPP) numbers for these countries and the world in 2011 were: Uruguay--US$13,866 Peru-US$5,904 World---US$10,359 = ( US$69.11 trillion / US$79.39 trillion ) x US$11,900. So that the OLPC seems to be overwhelmingly (3/4+) for children whose nation has a nominal GDP per capita no less than 43% below the world average. While it is wonderful to try helping so-called middle-income countries, is this what OLPC had in mind all along? And if the price of the machine hasn't fallen in 8 years, what sort of help can the masses in poor countries expect, and when? Are machines like the Aakash aka Sakshat just pipe dreams? A. An important strength of the OLPC XO series is how rugged and compatible with hostile rural environments it is, and how easy it is to repair, something the new low-cost tablets don't begin to address. It is not impossible that simpler machines, e.g. those based on audio alone, could do a lot of good in helping the very poorest people in the world. The growing availability of cellphones, even in the poorest countries, is surely a potential platform for learning materials. With the advent of the new tablet, it is clear that OLPC seems to be raising, rather than lowering, the mean income level of its target market spread - new unit sales of tablets to homes in high-income nations, plus the traditional bulk sales of rugged laptops to school systems mainly in middle- (but also in some high- low-) income nations. Q. Is the OLPC XO series still needed? Since it was on the drawing-board, the price of entry-level computers and appliances (e.g. ebook readers) has plummeted, with a whole world of netbooks come and gone, and an ever-increasing supply of tablets and smartphones. A. Again, the XO is a ruggedized machine - not a trivial consideration when dealing with K-6 students. It is easy and cheap to do basic repairs. And it is backed by a suite of free software based on Sugar and a community of developers. Two entire nations have made deep and expensive commitments to using the XO, and OLPC has a moral responsibility to see that they are not pushed off a cliff due to the evaporation of needed hardware. (At the same time, Sugar Labs has made Sugar available for free for installation on commodity PC gear.) Even today, a nation like Australia, which could afford to spend much more money on PCs, has elected to buy 55,000 XO units. Q. Will OLPC license key technologies to for-profit laptop makers? Have any for-profit firms expressed an interest in doing that? A. ??? Q. Are used XOs resold on eBay et alia? What price do they fetch these days? A. ??? Caryl, I assume you were a G1G1 person. If you ever go somewhere to do demos, I think it would be interesting if you could bring along BOTH an XO and a low-end laptop, showing how easy and quick it is to use SoaS on the latter in a non-conflicting way. This would also allow you to show how networking between the two machines works. With sufficient scripting, I think this would also make a great DailyMotion/YouTube/whatever video for Sugar Labs. Good luck! Ron ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
Hi Caryl, On 2/20/13, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: 1) What is the latest total number of XOs of all types deployed around the world, including developer machines, G1G1, large deployments, and small deployments.? (The wiki says 2 million as of March 2011… two years ago.) Last month at CES, OLPC's Giulia D'Amico said 2.8 million; evidenced in the video (743 views now) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa5pKmhCgd4 2) Has the production of the XO-4 begun? If not, when is it expected to start? See the cited video: In the next few months, Australia is going to roll out 55,000 [XO-4s] 3) What are the various options that will be offered with the XO-4? See the cited video: About $20 for an optional Neonode IR Touch framing touchscreen. 4) What is the projected cost of the XO-4? See the cited video: @$206 (with touchscreen) FOB China, 10,000+ units. 5) Will small orders (100 or more machines) still be considered for well thought-out projects? See the cited video: Evidently not. If you could persuade a retailer, e.g. Tiger Direct, that they could sell 10,000 units almost @$300 within a year, they might invest the $2M up front. Don't forget to add your ideas for questions and, if possible, their answers. It's well worth watching the cited video as well as its companion video (823 views now) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4pvFSG10R8 The big news is that OLPC reports potential buyers have expressed interest in Android, so it has a plan to move the XO-4 that way by YE2013. This poses an implicit challenge to Sugar Labs, namely, could Sugar sit on top of Android rather than Linux Fedora by then? Ron ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
Hi Folks, This weekend is SCaLE 11X. In addition to helping run an OLPC/Sugar Labs booth, I will be doing a presentation about OLPC and Sugar Labs and what wonderful things are happening, have happened, and will happen in the near future. I was hoping some of you would be able to fill in a few answers to questions I anticipate people may have. If you can answer any of these, please do! Also, if you think of anything else people are likely to ask that isn't listed here, please include the question and, if you know it, the answer. Many of these things are answers on the OLPC and Sugar Labs wikis, but some of the answers are woefully out of date, especially on the OLPC wiki. 1) What is the latest total number of XOs of all types deployed around the world, including developer machines, G1G1, large deployments, and small deployments.? (The wiki says 2 million as of March 2011… two years ago.) 2) Has the production of the XO-4 begun? If not, when is it expected to start? 3) What are the various options that will be offered with the XO-4? 4) What is the projected cost of the XO-4? 5) Will small orders (100 or more machines) still be considered for well thought-out projects? 6) Now that Sugar is running on the Raspberry Pi, what other possible devices may hope to see a Sugar version available in the future? 7) Since Sugar Labs is mainly volunteer driven, what are the greatest needs for new volunteers to work on Sugar? Can you suggest any particular projects that might be of interest? Don't forget to add your ideas for questions and, if possible, their answers. Thanks all!Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
1) What is the latest total number of XOs of all types deployed around the world, including developer machines, G1G1, large deployments, and small deployments.? (The wiki says 2 million as of March 2011� two years ago.) At the top of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments There are roughly 2.5 million XOs in the field as of January, 2012 Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
Well... that's a little bit better. That is only one year ago!Thanks!Caryl To: cbige...@hotmail.com CC: support-g...@lists.laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; test...@lists.laptop.org From: fors...@ozonline.com.au Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:11:50 +1100 Subject: Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X 1) What is the latest total number of XOs of all types deployed around the world, including developer machines, G1G1, large deployments, and small deployments.? (The wiki says 2 million as of March 2011� two years ago.) At the top of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments There are roughly 2.5 million XOs in the field as of January, 2012 Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Well... that's a little bit better. That is only one year ago! Thanks! Caryl My conservative estimate of Sugar on non-OLPC hardware is 500K, but it is hard to get a firm number. -walter To: cbige...@hotmail.com CC: support-g...@lists.laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; test...@lists.laptop.org From: fors...@ozonline.com.au Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:11:50 +1100 Subject: Re: [IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X 1) What is the latest total number of XOs of all types deployed around the world, including developer machines, G1G1, large deployments, and small deployments.? (The wiki says 2 million as of March 2011� two years ago.) At the top of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments There are roughly 2.5 million XOs in the field as of January, 2012 Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
