Having given up on its fantasies of creating a $10 laptop back in February, India has finally placed orders for a total of 250,000 units of OLPC laptops for its school children. OLPC India’s CEO Satish Jha comments that up to 3 million OLPC laptops are expected to be shipped to India before the end of the year, but for now the only sure figure is 250K. Whether the OLPC laptops that will be delivered to India are running on AMD chips or VIA C7-M processors wasn’t specified, however, it’s sure to be light years ahead of any $10 laptop they could have put together.
It may sound spooky and eerie, but yet it could be a powerful endorsement of a product with a worthy cause of giving poor kids a laptop. With the help of modern digital technology Beatles singer John Lennon who was shot in 1980 was resurrected and “remastered” digitally to promote the OLPC Project.
Yes folks, believe it or not John Lennon as an endorser of the OLPC XO Laptop. The ad spot which started playing last Christmas day was with full permission of course from Yoko Ono, John’s wife who was supporting the movement.
And in the video, John Lennon was saying:
“Imagine every child no matter where in the world they were could access a universe of knowledge. You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine, you can change the world.”
What do you think? A good promotional strategy or a poor try?
Finally, the OLPC XO laptop will soon be accessible to individuals who have been wanting to take part in this worthy cause. OLPC has announced that it will start selling the XO Laptop through Amazon.com on November 17. The XO Laptop will sold through Amazon the G1G1 program where individuals will have to pay for one laptop for the price of two units. The other laptop will be donated to a corresponding child in a developing country.
This would certainly help the OLPC in getting more mileage on their worthy project. However, there seems to be one glitch on this deal. The OLPC XO laptop that will be sold in Amazon will only have the Linux OS. No Windows XP version will be sold. I wonder how easily the recipient kids would be able to adopt to Linux as an OS for the XO?
The XO Laptop will initially be sold through Amazon’s US storefront only but there might be chance that it would also be available in other countries later on.
It looks like the OLPC XO Laptop powered by Windows XP will soon have it’s official guinea pig. In an agreement, Microsoft and OLPC announced that kids from Peru will be the first to try out the XO laptops with Windows XP as the OS. The pilot program will run for nine months and is aimed at testing the capabilities of the XO laptop when powered by the Windows XP.
If you will recall, Microsoft and OLPC have been testing the XO’s capabilities in running Windows XP. And just recently, they announced that the XO’s will soon be available with the said OS for countries would want to have the said laptops. XO used to run only with Linux but OLPC had to work it out with Microsoft since most countries demanded to have the said laptops with Windows XP OS.
Honestly, we’re really hoping that the XO laptop finally gets the success it needs in Peru so that other countries may follow in adapting it. The XO Laptop has been around for quiet some time now, and it is but the right time for it to prove itself to the world.
PC World is reporting that Amazon will bring back its Give One Bring One promo for OLPC’s XO netbook this coming November and will run until end of December, just in time for the Christmas shopping rush most probably. Actually, said promo was announced as early as June 2008 but it is only now that Amazon is finally launching the promotional gig for the said netbook, possibly to shoot up its sales figures.
Once launched, the promo will run only for the United States customers. Although there is a possibility that it will also rolled out for customers residing in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
If Amazon makes this official, we’re pretty sure that others even non-netbook fanatics would be interested to avail of the promo if only for the sheer good purpose that it aims to fulfill – that is to provide kids from underdeveloped areas an XO laptop of their own.
Hopefully, should Amazon push through with this promo, that they would make this as a global campaign. And finally, this could be the start of the fullfilment of the OLPC’s cause.
Remember the One Laptop Per Child Project which produced the XO Laptop? Well, some may not remember this project anymore as it seemed to have never really made it big (commercially, although it was never really made for that purpose anyway). Until now, when it may have finally reached its dictum – that is providing one laptop per child, well at least in the small island of Niue in the South Pacific. In fact, said island becomes the first nation in the world to have issued one laptop to all its children.
But of course, having one laptop per child member of the country in Niue is not all that impossible, Niue only got around 500 children in its population base – so that makes up for a total of 500 OLPC XO laptop distribution.
Interestingly, although the XO laptop was designed for school children aged 6-12 only, even high school students in Niue were given the said laptop. And interestingly again, even though the island was small, all the inhabitants are said to gave free internet access. Wow! I could go on a vacation there anytime and never miss a single day’s post here at Eee PC Blog!
Anyway, hopefully these 500 laptops can do wonders to the kids in Niue. That may take them away from the beaches for quite awhile. Although if I were them, I’d still prefer to spend my day “”unconnected.”
A post on Gizmodo has pointed out a disturbing trend, which has been noted in the laptop.org forums- the rubberized keys on the keyboard of the OLPC laptop are being easily peeled off by the children.
The forum thread has several people asking how to get replacement keys, and one of them even posted a picture:
Having never physically handled one, I had always assumed that the rubberized keyboard was all one piece, ala the ‘rollable’ rubber keyboards that you can purchase on ThinkGeek. The main purpose being, over course, to keep grit and moisture from getting into the keyboard.
But if laptops like the XO are to be designed for educational purposes, the designers are going to have to take into account the sorts of random things little hands will do when they get near a keyboard.
There are no replacement keys or keyboards for the XO. Thankfully, somebody has devised a way to replace the keyboard with a usb one, but in a developing nation, I don’t think that option is always going to be readily available.
This story should make us all eternally grateful for how sturdy the Eee PC is.
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