Re: XO-1.75 progress, touchscreen, developers, audience

2010-11-11 Thread Carlos Nazareno
>> IMHO the next XO would be irrelevant to the public without it
>> as it would offer no significant change outside the hood from the 1.5.
>
> No, but an XO-1.75 that uses half the power and therefore provides twice the
> battery life is an XO that is now available to many children who don't have
> the electrons to use XO-1.5 machines, or for whom a 4-hour battery life is
> inadequate but an 8-hour battery life would be quite useful.
>
>   - Ed

Well, that is very big :)
The battery life of the Kindle, iPad & other tablets are incredible.

Here's the thing though:

The XO is now competing with the existing and growing slew of Android
Tablets from China that cost $100 and under.

Here's just one for example:
http://micgadget.com/3210/the-cheapest-android-tablet-you-can-get-in-china/

Add to that the growing legion of Android developers - as I said
before, OLPC needs to attract more 3rd party developers as it's still
lacking apps.

IMHO, something tablets cannot compete with that XO can do is the
reconfigurable dual keyboard-touchscreen setup. Touchscreens are
complete gamechangers, but for typing papers (and coding! I hope
underprivileged kids grow up and start playing with code early!) - I
think virtual keyboards are up to par yet.

Although adding touch would significantly add to the cost, it will
help developers get more used to and familiar the multi-touch
paradigm. This way also, devs will be having huge familiarity with it
once the XO-3 rolls out.

Well, OLPC is still setting trends :) RIM/Blackberry is already
starting to do a "contributors' program": at Adobe Max 2010
(http://max.adobe.com), Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis announced that
developers who get their Adobe AIR apps approved for the Blackberry
App store would be eligible for free Blackberry Playbook tablets.

Apps, apps apps! For Children, OLPC is competing with other platforms
that have a growing library of kid-friendly apps.

With regards to 3rd party developers, perhaps a wide press release
making the contributors' program more visible might help? OLPC really,
really needs more evangelism as sad to say, it has lost a lot of
mindshare over the past few years due to FUD, and it really needs to
be more competitive.

Another thing I find sad is people raving on the different screen
technologies like with Kindle & its "incredible sunlight readability"
when Pixel Qi much, much superior.

OLPC needs to win more hearts and minds. I really don't think OLPC can
win the price war anymore, so I think the focus should be building on
and carrying on with its core strength of producing a superior
innovative platform. Another big thing is the hackability,
customizability & ownability that corporate outfits like Apple will
not let you do with their locked-down devices.

Another food for thought:
Whenever I bring the XO-1 with me and friends who have kids see it,
first reaction is:
"I want one for my kid. Where can I get one?"

Sad part is that currently, the answer is "You can't."

I know that the G1G1 program had many problems, but the Philippines is
so near to China & Taiwan that customs + taxes aside, it would be
ridiculously easy logistics-wise to ship units here compared to the
U.S. and Europe. G1G1 would not be feasible here though, because it's
really too expensive for people who can pay here.

Would it be possible to do a small "available to consumers" Buy 1 Get
1 (B1G1) pilot here for a "cost + some margins to help support OLPC"
program? A big help to evangelize OLPC would be to actually get people
to experience it and own it.

Another thing that's completely wrong:
Reverse-gadget envy - that underprivileged kids & public schools can
get something for free that taxpayers pay for when governments shell
out for XO units, and yet tax-paying citizens cannot get their hands
on them and provide them to their own kids. I think it's also sad and
wrong for OLPC to just surrender a big audience demographic to other
netbook makers as some people here in the list have suggested because
the XOs still pack features that are unavailable with other platforms.

These can be remedied, right?

I love OLPC and the platform it provides. I want it to succeed and
keep leading the revolution. I hope I didn't offend anyone, but this
is insight coming from a member of a third world country where poverty
is a big big problem and ordinary citizens struggle to make ends meet.

Congrats again with the progress! Rock on!

-Naz

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Re: Contents of Devel Digest, Vol 57, Issue 14

2010-11-11 Thread Tabitha Roder
 

> No, but an XO-1.75 that uses half the power and therefore provides twice
> the battery life is an XO that is now available to many children who don't
> have the electrons to use XO-1.5 machines, or for whom a 4-hour battery life
> is inadequate but an 8-hour battery life would be quite useful.
>
>
+1 for increase in battery, would be great to have the XO last the whole
school day so just charge it at night and don't need to charge during class
(which could be considered disruptive). Significant improvement.
Tabitha
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Ed McNierney
Naz -

Thanks for the thoughts!

> IMHO it's better to delay the release of the 1.75 and force putting in
> a touchscreen.

It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of the price deployments are willing 
to pay for it.  The feedback we've heard so far is that since the XO-1.75 
without a touchscreen is every bit as functional as an XO-1.5 is, deployments 
cannot justify paying the noticeable additional cost for a touchscreen.  If 
that changes, fine, but I think it's unlikely.  Cost is more important than 
touch input functionality (again, to XO-1.75 end users, not tablet software 
developers).

> IMHO the next XO would be irrelevant to the public without it
> as it would offer no significant change outside the hood from the 1.5.

No, but an XO-1.75 that uses half the power and therefore provides twice the 
battery life is an XO that is now available to many children who don't have the 
electrons to use XO-1.5 machines, or for whom a 4-hour battery life is 
inadequate but an 8-hour battery life would be quite useful.

- Ed
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Carlos Nazareno
Yes, the touchscreen is very important and is a complete gamechanger.

The natural reaction for everyone is to try to use the screen as a
touchscreen, especially children nowadays.

Painting activites like colors are more natural and it becomes easier
to use point-and click games/activities that don't use the keyboard
with a touchscreen.

Touchscreens are just so... natural, ergonomic and, usable.

Here's another big, big, big thing with regards to schoolwork:

With a touchscreen, you can draw diagrams & doodles when taking notes
which are essential in school + the creative process and are why
laptops as they were cannot replace notebooks.

It's a big shame the stylus for the XO-1 was never built and
functioned. That would have solved it.

Also, everyone here has to remember that despite the world going
digital, penmanship is still a skill young children need to master,
especially for every different culture - moreso chinese with its
complex writing system. Writing is just too awkward with the touchpad.
Did I mention drawing & coloring is an important skill for young
children? (I want to build a coloring book app - I can easily do it in
Flash/AIR)

If the stylus will still not be made to run on the XO-1.75, a
touchscreen is a *must*-have. It's just broken without it and will
make the machine a bit less relevant.

IMHO it's better to delay the release of the 1.75 and force putting in
a touchscreen. With the onslaught of cheap Android tablets coming from
China, IMHO the next XO would be irrelevant to the public without it
as it would offer no significant change outside the hood from the 1.5.

There's just so many creative things app-wise one can do with multitouch :-/

That being said, congrats on the progress!

-Naz

>
> Back in July there were plans to have a touchscreen in the XO-1.75:
>
>   "the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as will future OLPC tablets based 
> on
> its design"
>
>   http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-July/025376.html
>
> So this has been tabled?
>
> - Bert -

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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Bert Freudenberg

On 11.11.2010, at 21:33, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>> You can get Marvell's spec sheets on ... the Armada 610 SoCs at:
>> http://www.marvell.com/products/processors/applications/armada_600/armada610_pb.pdf
> 
> That spec sheet is kinda skimpy.  In a discussion of CPU performance for
> the XO-1.75, Chris Ball said "we're now using a dual-issue CPU".
> I was not sure what that phrase meant (perhaps "dual core"?) - but this
> cited Marvell spec sheet did not clarify that about the Armada 610/MMP2.

It's a single core, but can (sometimes) issue two instructions in one cycle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superscalar

- Bert -


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Re: Contents of Devel Digest, Vol 57, Issue 12

2010-11-11 Thread Tabitha Roder
>
> From: Chris Ball 
> Subject: XO-1.75 progress
>
> That's going to take several months, but
> we wanted you to know that it will be coming.
>
> Thanks!
> - Chris, on behalf of the OLPC Engineering team.
>
>
Thanks Chris for giving us an update on XO-1.75 progress and keeping us in
the loop; very much appreciated. As information is shared, hopefully the
community can offer useful feedback and will be prepared to assist in their
relevant ways when the time comes.

Tabitha
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Mikus Grinbergs
> You can get Marvell's spec sheets on ... the Armada 610 SoCs at:
> http://www.marvell.com/products/processors/applications/armada_600/armada610_pb.pdf

That spec sheet is kinda skimpy.  In a discussion of CPU performance for
the XO-1.75, Chris Ball said "we're now using a dual-issue CPU".
I was not sure what that phrase meant (perhaps "dual core"?) - but this
cited Marvell spec sheet did not clarify that about the Armada 610/MMP2.

mikus


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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Gary Martin
Ed,

On 11 Nov 2010, at 18:30, Ed McNierney  wrote:

> Bert -
> 
> No, not at all.  Our plans were, and are, to build XO-1.75 laptops with 
> touchscreen support.  That's an essential step in our tablet development, we 
> think.  That will essentially provide us with a 7.5" 4:3 tablet inside a 
> laptop case.  That's a little small for a tablet, but it allows useful 
> software development for a tablet model quite early - with a keyboard and 
> mouse as fallback tools.

Many thanks for the clarification, really good to know. I was hoping to use an 
iPad for early UI Sugar testing using remote sessions back to a host (VNC and 
RDP), unfortunately the clients get in the way of useful UI testing.

--Gary

> But I think it's important to think about XO-1.75 more as a set of 
> technologies than as a "product" right now.  We're still experimenting.  
> We're learning, for example, that while interested deployments like the idea 
> of an XO laptop with a touchscreen, they're also very sensitive to price, and 
> aren't likely to purchase machines with an optional piece of hardware that 
> isn't necessary for the device's operation, especially when that hardware 
> will add more than $10 to the cost of the machine.  So we're certainly going 
> to produce XO-1.75 machines with touchscreens for software development, but 
> it's entirely possible that no machines will be delivered to deployments with 
> touchscreens installed.
> 
>   - Ed
> 
> 
> On Nov 11, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> 
>> On 11.11.2010, at 12:49, Ed McNierney wrote:
>> 
>>> [...] we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 
>>> tablet is a long way away and it's not really useful to discuss/speculate 
>>> on it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.
>>> 
>>> - Ed
>> 
>> Back in July there were plans to have a touchscreen in the XO-1.75:
>> 
>>  "the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as will future OLPC tablets based 
>> on its design"
>> 
>>  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-July/025376.html
>> 
>> So this has been tabled?
>> 
>> - Bert -
>> 
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Ed McNierney
Marvell's Armada SoC family is complicated.  There are multiple product lines, 
and multiple products in each product line, with new ones coming along all the 
time.  So it's hard to nail down just which device is the "latest and greatest" 
at any time.

OLPC is (unsurprisingly) doing something a little unusual.  We're trying to 
create a laptop (first) and then a tablet, each of which is a really 
full-function, general-purpose device.  If you look at Marvell's ARM product 
selector guide and try to figure out which SoC is recommended for a laptop, you 
won't find one.  And if you look for tablets you find either (a) SoCs for 
e-book readers or (b) SoCs for entertainment devices.

Our decision path is based on the obvious criteria of power consumption and 
cost, but we also need devices that support the interfaces we need as well.  
There are a lot of devices to connect to an SoC, and the decision tree for 
finding the SoC that fits well is tricky (mainly because a lot of interfaces 
may be available, but muxed in a way that makes X unusable if you want to use 
Y, etc.

In considering performance and cost, we want to look at processors that won't 
be shiny new when we have a product available, and won't be at the top of the 
performance curve then, either.  The "high-end" SoC of last spring, when we got 
started, won't be the high-end SoC when a product is available.  All of that 
led us to the Armada 610 product line.

I can't really comment much on the Marvell Mobylize product pages - the one you 
linked to is one I've never seen before - and they're not really pertinent to 
what OLPC is doing.  Marvell wants to get a lot of vendors using their SoCs in 
a variety of different ways, so they're motivated to have a variety of sample 
offerings.  In fact, the tablet you pointed to claims to use the Armada 168 
SoC, but when you look at http://www.mobylize.org/about the last question says:

"Which Marvell processors are being used with the Moby prototype?

The Moby concept is based on Marvell's high-performance, highly scalable and 
low-power Marvell® ARMADA™ 610 application processor. Marvell is also making 
available a reference design for developing and testing applications."

You can get Marvell's spec sheets on the Armada 168 and Armada 610 SoCs at:

http://www.marvell.com/products/processors/applications/armada_100/armada_168/pxa_168_pb.pdf
http://www.marvell.com/products/processors/applications/armada_600/armada610_pb.pdf

- Ed

P.S. I think I answered the touchscreen questions in my reply to Bert, but yes, 
we're also using the XO-1 case because that's what we have now.  That saves 
many hundreds of thousands of dollars.


On Nov 11, 2010, at 8:42 AM, NoiseEHC wrote:

> Okay, I will rephrase my questions maybe I will get a real answer to them:
> 
> 1.
> Is there any reason why do you use the latest and greatest Marvell SoC 
> instead of an old (and maybe cheaper) one? Like the tablets on the "Marvell 
> product platform page" do?
> 
> 2.
> There were plans for touch screen and bigger display for the XO 1.75. What 
> happened to those plans? Do you use the XO-1 case because there is what you 
> have now, or because those plans were scrapped?
> 
> Thanks!

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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Bert Freudenberg
Awesome :)

If we can make Sugar and its activities work on that smallish touchscreen we'd 
be in an excellent position for the tablet work.

/me wants one

- Bert -

On 11.11.2010, at 19:30, Ed McNierney wrote:

> Bert -
> 
> No, not at all.  Our plans were, and are, to build XO-1.75 laptops with 
> touchscreen support.  That's an essential step in our tablet development, we 
> think.  That will essentially provide us with a 7.5" 4:3 tablet inside a 
> laptop case.  That's a little small for a tablet, but it allows useful 
> software development for a tablet model quite early - with a keyboard and 
> mouse as fallback tools.
> 
> But I think it's important to think about XO-1.75 more as a set of 
> technologies than as a "product" right now.  We're still experimenting.  
> We're learning, for example, that while interested deployments like the idea 
> of an XO laptop with a touchscreen, they're also very sensitive to price, and 
> aren't likely to purchase machines with an optional piece of hardware that 
> isn't necessary for the device's operation, especially when that hardware 
> will add more than $10 to the cost of the machine.  So we're certainly going 
> to produce XO-1.75 machines with touchscreens for software development, but 
> it's entirely possible that no machines will be delivered to deployments with 
> touchscreens installed.
> 
>   - Ed
> 
> 
> On Nov 11, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> 
>> On 11.11.2010, at 12:49, Ed McNierney wrote:
>> 
>>> [...] we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 
>>> tablet is a long way away and it's not really useful to discuss/speculate 
>>> on it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.
>>> 
>>> - Ed
>> 
>> Back in July there were plans to have a touchscreen in the XO-1.75:
>> 
>>  "the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as will future OLPC tablets based 
>> on its design"
>> 
>>  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-July/025376.html
>> 
>> So this has been tabled?
>> 
>> - Bert -
>> 
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Ed McNierney
Bert -

No, not at all.  Our plans were, and are, to build XO-1.75 laptops with 
touchscreen support.  That's an essential step in our tablet development, we 
think.  That will essentially provide us with a 7.5" 4:3 tablet inside a laptop 
case.  That's a little small for a tablet, but it allows useful software 
development for a tablet model quite early - with a keyboard and mouse as 
fallback tools.

But I think it's important to think about XO-1.75 more as a set of technologies 
than as a "product" right now.  We're still experimenting.  We're learning, for 
example, that while interested deployments like the idea of an XO laptop with a 
touchscreen, they're also very sensitive to price, and aren't likely to 
purchase machines with an optional piece of hardware that isn't necessary for 
the device's operation, especially when that hardware will add more than $10 to 
the cost of the machine.  So we're certainly going to produce XO-1.75 machines 
with touchscreens for software development, but it's entirely possible that no 
machines will be delivered to deployments with touchscreens installed.

- Ed


On Nov 11, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On 11.11.2010, at 12:49, Ed McNierney wrote:
> 
>> [...] we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 
>> tablet is a long way away and it's not really useful to discuss/speculate on 
>> it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.
>> 
>>  - Ed
> 
> Back in July there were plans to have a touchscreen in the XO-1.75:
> 
>   "the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as will future OLPC tablets based 
> on its design"
> 
>   http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-July/025376.html
> 
> So this has been tabled?
> 
> - Bert -
> 
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread NoiseEHC
Okay, I will rephrase my questions maybe I will get a real answer to them:

1.
Is there any reason why do you use the latest and greatest Marvell SoC 
instead of an old (and maybe cheaper) one? Like the tablets on the 
"Marvell product platform page" do?

2.
There were plans for touch screen and bigger display for the XO 1.75. 
What happened to those plans? Do you use the XO-1 case because there is 
what you have now, or because those plans were scrapped?

Thanks!

On 2010.11.11. 12:49, Ed McNierney wrote:
>> Two questions:
>>
>> 1.
>> Here (under Tech Specs)
>> http://bit.ly/bdr0Cz
>> it specs the 10" tablet with an ARMADA 168. Why did not you go with that
>> processor? Would not that be cheaper?
> That's a Marvell product platform page, not OLPC's.
>
>> 2.
>> What happened to the bigger display and the touch panel plan? As I see
>> on the pictures the machines have the old 7.5" display.
> Again, those are Marvell pictures, not OLPC's, and Marvell has lots of other 
> folks interested in building their tablets.  In fact, the world is full of 7" 
> 16:9 tablet folks.
>
> But the most pertinent answer is that we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, 
> which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 tablet is a long way away and it's not really 
> useful to discuss/speculate on it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.
>
>   - Ed
>
>> Thanks!
>>
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Bert Freudenberg
On 11.11.2010, at 12:49, Ed McNierney wrote:

> [...] we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 
> tablet is a long way away and it's not really useful to discuss/speculate on 
> it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.
> 
>   - Ed

Back in July there were plans to have a touchscreen in the XO-1.75:

"the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as will future OLPC tablets based 
on its design"

http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-July/025376.html

So this has been tabled?

- Bert -

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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread Ed McNierney
> Two questions:
> 
> 1.
> Here (under Tech Specs)
> http://bit.ly/bdr0Cz
> it specs the 10" tablet with an ARMADA 168. Why did not you go with that 
> processor? Would not that be cheaper?

That's a Marvell product platform page, not OLPC's. 

> 
> 2.
> What happened to the bigger display and the touch panel plan? As I see 
> on the pictures the machines have the old 7.5" display.

Again, those are Marvell pictures, not OLPC's, and Marvell has lots of other 
folks interested in building their tablets.  In fact, the world is full of 7" 
16:9 tablet folks.

But the most pertinent answer is that we're talking about XO-1.75 right now, 
which is a laptop.  An OLPC-3 tablet is a long way away and it's not really 
useful to discuss/speculate on it now.  We're working on XO-1.75.

- Ed

> 
> Thanks!
> 
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new $95 10W solar panels, suggested for XO-1 and XO-1.5

2010-11-11 Thread Holt
$85 each if you buy 4:

 http://iLoveMyXO.com/category/xo-accessories.html

Does anyone have any real-world feedback yet, on these solar panels 
iLoveMyXO.com announced 10 days ago at http://olpcSF.org/summit ?

PS join our separate electrical power discussions here if you have a 
serious *engineering* interest in alternative energy:

 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/power
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Re: XO-1.75 progress

2010-11-11 Thread NoiseEHC
 > OLPC Engineering had a trip to Taipei for the XO-1.75 motherboard
 > bringup last week.  The 1.75 machine lives in the same industrial
 > design (display, case, batteries) as the XO-1/XO-1.5, but uses an
 > ARM system-on-chip from Marvell -- the Armada 610/MMP2.

Now that is good news.

Two questions:

1.
Here (under Tech Specs)
http://bit.ly/bdr0Cz
it specs the 10" tablet with an ARMADA 168. Why did not you go with that 
processor? Would not that be cheaper?

2.
What happened to the bigger display and the touch panel plan? As I see 
on the pictures the machines have the old 7.5" display.

Thanks!

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