Charbax.com

Yesterday I got on the frontpage of Digg with this story: OLPC on 60 Minutes: Intel is evil, and a few days ago I was also on the front page of Digg with The first children have received their 100$ laptops.

The cost of the Classmate is closer to $400. Though Intel is offering only to OLPC launch states in maximum bunches of 10 thousand units at $180 each. Thus Intel is taking a $220 loss per laptop. Intel will only sell at that price in relatively low volumes, you can be sure Intel won’t commit to deliver a million laptops per country at that price.

I have tried both at http://olpc.tv (even though those were not the latest versions), and I can tell you that while OLPC XO-1 is 100% made of innovation, the Classmate is nothing more than a lower spec conventional laptop with an Intel ULV processor (like the one in the UMPCs) and with a 2GB flash memory instead of a 20GB HDD (which doesn’t cut price more than about $30). Intel might as well give out low spec full screen and full keyboard sized laptops in batches of 10 thousand units, it wouldn’t cost Intel much more. What Intel is doing is making people think that the Classmate is innovation, just because it’s the same size as the OLPC XO-1, while Classmate is 0% innovation.

OLPC XO-1 is better in terms of power managment (12h battery life with backlight and heavy use compared to 2h battery life on the Classmate, the Classmate consumes nearly 10 times more Watts per hour of use), the dual-mode high resolution screen of the XO-1 is sunlight readable and usable for e-books (Classmate is just a conventionnal and expensive 7″ LCD, just like the ones on the expensive UMPCs) and the software of the XO-1 is made for education and is full of innovation for that use, fully open source thus constantly being optimized and new location specific apps can be added (while Classmate is nothing but a normal laptop running Windows XP, Intel did nothing to improve or adapt any educational software for the Classmate running Windows XP, the Classmate comes with no other educational software than what is currently available on Windows XP and on the Internet).

OLPC XO-1 can run Windows XP, but Microsoft has on purpose not wanted to confirm that, because Microsoft also is hoping that OLPC XO-1 will not start mass production as planned. But you can be sure that XO-1 hardware can support a customized slimmed down Windows XP and OSX, once it is mass produced, you can be sure that Microsoft and Apple will be able to relatively quickly deliver those customized unbloated and free-licenced or $3-licenced OS to the OLPC schools on a 1GB SD card.