I wanted you to know the amazing website of “Design Real” exhibition at serpentine gallery, london, curated by Konstantin Grcic.
This website, wich will remain a permanet and free online resources for designers, to me is the soul of the whole show: it si full of usefull information about products, materials, production processes, design history and more; Internet lacked such a great database for designers.
I haven’t visited the exhibition yet, but I already received the nice catalogue, wich features an interesting introduction by Jonathan Olivares (that you can find here) and an interview to konstantin Grcic by Serpentine’s curator Hans Hulrich Obrist.

When the Government of India’s Ministry of Education announced that it was planning to unveil an ultra low cost laptop for 500 INR (10 USD/8 EUR), the announcement was met with widespread skepticism. This ultra low cost laptop, developed in association with some university departments, was meant to be used by students and was supposed to be a rugged, energy efficient laptop that performed basic computing functions.

The worthless Indian media has been projecting it as India’s answer to the OLPC XO, the student laptop that was expected to cost $100, but ended up costing double that amount. The cheapest laptop at the moment is Jointech’s J-PRO JL7100 Mini Laptop that costs $99. So how could a device be developed for one-tenth of that price?

The “laptop” was unveiled today at Venkateswara University in Tirupathi, in the presence of ministers and government officials. Did it live up to the promise of being the world’s cheapest laptop? Here is a picture of the “laptop”:

The $10 “laptop”, Sakshat…

As it turns out, it is neither a laptop nor does it cost 10 USD! The device is rumoured to cost around 1000 INR (20 USD/16 EUR) at the moment, but a lot of “finetuning” and mass production should see the price drop to $10.

Details are sketchy, but the device is supposed to measure 10″ x 5″ and reportedly has 2 GB of memory, Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, USB port and consume very little power. It can be connected to another computer or a printer. As can be seen in the picture, the device seems to have a tiny display.

What’s clear though, is that the $10 laptop is not a “laptop” by any stretch of the imagination! It seems to be a storage device with a tiny integrated display and some connectivity features. The government wants to distribute it to schools to enable students to download e-books and journals from its education portal. It has reportedly made deals with some textbook publishers for the content, some of it for free.

For the Indian media which has been projecting the device as India’s answer to low cost laptops and claiming that the device would usher in a revolution by bridging the “digital divide”, the unveiling of the “laptop” must have come as a rude shock! Well, that’s how useless the mainstream media in India really is. They don’t have a clue of what’s going on and keep dishing out sheer nonsense. For those who believed that this could be another ultra low cost product from India that has the potential to be a resounding success after the Tata Nano, the “laptop” turned out to be a damp squib! The officials had no answer when they were asked why the device was being touted as a laptop when it was not one.      :-x

For now, the technology joke of the year can be awarded jointly to two of India’s worst institutions, the government bureaucracy and the mainstream media!!!    

The credit crunch computer is set to arrive tomorrow in India when officials unveil the 500 rupee (£7.25) laptop. In an attempt to bridge the “digital divide” in the country between rich and poor, the government will show off the prototype, low-cost laptop as the centrepiece of an ambitious e-learning programme to link 18,000 colleges and 400 universities across the country.

India has a reputation for creating ultra-cheap technologies, a trend sparked last year by the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car at Rs100,000 (£1,450).

The computer, known as Sakshat, which translates as “before your eyes”, will be launched as part of a new Rs46bn “national mission for education”. This envisages a network of laptops from which students can access lectures, coursework and specialist help from anywhere in India, triggering a revolution in education. A number of publishers have reportedly agreed to upload portions of their textbooks on to the system.

Prabhakar Rao, vice-chancellor of the university in Andhra Pradesh from where the Sakshat will be launched, said that India was “looking to get the hardware and software cheaper. In a developing country, costs have to be kept low so that the maximum number of students will benefit. That means cheap computers and cheap broadband access, so that students get access to ebooks and ejournals.”

Although half of India’s 1 billion people are aged below 25, the country has fallen behind in terms of university places, with only 11% of students enrolled, compared with double that in China. India’s bigger northern neighbour already has 180 million internet users, five times India’s total.

Designed by scientists at the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the state-controlled Semiconductor Complex, the laptop has 2Gb of Ram and wireless connectivity. In an attempt to keep costs low, experts say it is unlikely to use familiar Microsoft Windows software.

Officials are confident that the Rs500 price tag can be met. RP Agarwal, the top civil servant for Indian higher education, told newspapers last week that “at this stage, the price is working out to be $20 [Rs1,000] but with mass production it is bound to come down.”

The Indian machine would also be considerably cheaper than the “$100 laptop”, the lime-green computer known as the Children’s Machine or XO that was designed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

Launched in 2005 in a flurry of praise by Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of MIT’s Media Lab, the XO has failed to take off, partly because it costs $200 (£141) to make. However it has given rise to low-cost computers that save money by getting rid of hard drives and using cheap screens. The Classmate PC made by Intel, the world’s biggest microchip manufacturer, can be bought for $400. Taiwan’s Eee PC costs as little as $200.

However, some experts doubt that a laptop at $20 or $10 is commercially sustainable. Rajesh Jain, managing director of Netcore Solutions and a pioneer of low-cost computing in India, said: “You cannot even [make] a computer screen for $20. And India does not build much computer hardware. So where will the savings come from?”

Some bloggers today saw the new laptop as nothing more than a “souped up calculator”. The sceptism was summed up by Atanu Dey, whose blog read: “If the government could pull-off a near-impossible technological miracle, does it not imply that the entire global computer industry is either totally incompetent or else it is a huge scam which produces stuff at very little cost and sells them at exorbitant prices.”

Officials have been reluctant to talk about the project ahead of the launch, however, one did say that costs have been kept low by using students and researchers to do much of the designing. He said that in 2007 the cost was $47, but further refinements meant it dropped dramatically.

Low-cost inventions

• India saw the launch of the $2,000 (£1,410) “people’s car” by the motor company Tata last year.

• Wind-up everything. Since Trevor Bayliss invented the wind-up radio in 1989 the technology has spread. Wind-up power is now common in camping equipment and is being installed in African villages to provide lighting.

• DIY-adjustable glasses. The brainchild of British inventor Josh Silver, whose aim is to offer the specs to a billion of the world’s poorest by 2020.

• In Kenya Equity Bank recently launched mobile banking, which allows customers to deposit, transfer and withdraw cash using a mobile phone.

“No system can remain stable or exist without continuous and constant development and evolution of itself. Education has come a long developing, evolving and transforming itself with time to meet the needs of the world.”

Schools, colleges and universities have always opted for the best and latest technologies to educate the students and keep up with the progressing technological trends of the world. These changes have come with constantly changing technological aspects of the world.

Information Technology Revolution
Most of world’s educational developments in the last quarter of the 20th century are attributed to information technology that provided a unified platform for sharing of information and to learn greater then ever. A few technologies that specifically centered learning and comprehension are described below.

Computers
Computers have been used as an integral part of curriculum for decades. The technology has changed with time and improved to present. Since the late 80’s computers have been integrated into elementary education and students have since been learning on a completely new and advanced system.

Projectors and presentations
Science has proven that the mind learns far more quickly and efficiently with visual representation. That’s another reason why online education is so popular. All the courses are visually reprinted with multimedia presentations, charts and graphs where necessary. This illustrative approach to teaching helps students learn plenty in a very short time.

Education and the World Wide Web
Internet was simply the biggest revolution of the information technology age that has literally created an entirely new and astounding globally interactive environment that changed communication and sharing of information as knew it forever. Students, teachers and professionals alike have immensely use the internet to learn, understand and share.

Futuristic Educational developments
The last few years has seen a very dramatic change in online learning and its delivery systems. Initially online education was all about courses offered online with little or no dynamic interactivity or student involvement in it. Students had access to educational material that they read, understood and appeared in online exams.

Things have changed since then. Today online students are more informed, more engaged and more interested in learning online than ever. This is because of the technologies and methods that changed the face of online education.

Of forums, chatting and blogs
Online learners now have access to forums, chat rooms, blogs, video conferencing, online communities and much more. When summed up, online education makes a very refreshing experience.
The courses offered online are dynamic with structured curriculums that help students make their own schedule and study at their own pace.

Interactive learning
Online schools have introduced various new techniques of keeping students involved with their studies. These include use of interactive experiences where students can enjoy while they learn; the use of video conferencing has also helped a great deal because face-to-face communication between students and teachers make learning exciting. Similarly, online presentations have made learning a lot easier.

Learning through mobile technology
With the millennium came perhaps the next big step in online education. Universities have taken a step forward to merge mobile technology with online education. Students can access their classrooms from their mobile phones and PDAs anytime anywhere.
Specialized PDA’s have been developed solely for the purpose of online education supported with the latest technologies like wifi and wimax.

E-Learning 2.0
The term e-Learning 2.0 is now being used to refer to new ways of thinking about online education inspired by the emergence of Web 2.0. The new concepts of E-learning have emphasized on extending online education from classes to more social places. These include blogs, wikis, podcasts and virtual world learning.

Wikis
Wikis is a term derived from the renowned online free encyclopedia Wikipedia. Now a days the term “Wiki” is used to describe a collective of information on a particular subject or topic. This decentralized approach to information has separated yet provided an even more detailed and illustrated information base for educators and students alike.

Virtual Classroom revamping
The increased use of virtual classroom has simultaneously increased the development of these virtual classrooms. One of the latest developments is the interactive system that allows students to interact with other students and teachers in real time using an interactive whiteboard, VOPI systems and chat that allow audio and video communication and sharing. Not only are these technologies relatively simple to implant but also very cheap for the students to use.

100$ Laptop
The 100$ laptop or the one-child-one-laptop program is also an important venture. This laptop would allow students in remote areas or those who can’t afford an education to learn with ease. A 100$ laptop combined with affordable online education could just be the answer to reducing worldwide illiteracy greatly.

Online learning has learned a lot from itself as well. It has grown into a reliable, flexible and affordable platform that meets tomorrow’s promises today.

I lately stumbled upon Nicolas Negroponte’s Spotlight MIT 2008 OLPC keynote. His speech revealed some interesting One Laptop per Child facts that were new to me – the project is close to manufacturing/shipping 1 million of XO-1 devices, which have cost in average $230 a piece. OLPC foundation itself has 23 full time employees and a turnaround of $230M. Negroponte also described current OLPC situation and explained some hopes and fears of the project.

OLPC caught a lot of press at the time of its creation, which went however there faster and there slower down and one did not hear about the project in the meantime a lot. Many people were also concentrated on the “$100 laptop” buzzword only. But today, with $187 per device, the project is closer than ever to starting successfully fulfilling its mission of third world’s education.

One of the early critics was Wayan Vota in his OLPC News posts. As a former Geekcorps director and a world citizen, Wayan criticized all BUT the laptop – it was mainly the implementation what he saw underestimated. After all, Negroponte does not hide the failures of the project and admits that a lot of things went wrong or are not developing as expected. However I see these “failures” as very minor ones in such a great challenge, which OLPC without question is.

Originally posted on Slice.

About two years out of college, I’ve started attending panels and discussions. There’s so much to be learned, and with marketing and communications moving at such a fast pace, I realized that my education has just begun. Surprisingly, I’m enjoying the quest.

Last night’s panel at Swissnex, a forum dedicated to connecting Swiss companies with those on the West Coast, the topic was innovation and design and their contribution and sustainability of big business, a.k.a. the Fortune 500. Reena Jana from BusinessWeek did an excellent job moderating.

GM was brought up as the old dinosaur that lacked the processes to change, while GE became the epitome of companies who transformed it’s corporates structure to be able to continually innovate.

[Photo via Baia's Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.]

The point that stuck was that from a designer’s perspective, good innovation is something that the customers and designers both wanted. It’s the glue that held business and sustainability and marketing and engineering. I don’t necessarily agree. The struggle with marketing and engineering is that what the customers want doesn’t always overlap with why the engineers want to create. Of course, customers don’t always know what they want. Until BOSE designed super small speakers, their audience didn’t think it was an option. So how can companies know what’s the next best thing?

All the panelists agreed that focus groups and customer surveys rarely make a good indicator of if the product will do well in the market place. And just because a small group of evangelists at the company love the idea doesn’t necessarily correlate to a stellar sales record.

[Photo via Baia's Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.]

It’s a problem the companies deal with on a daily basis. Is there a one size fits all solution? Or will some companies follow the suggestions on the market, while others like BOSE and Apple simply continue forging ahead and presenting their audience with what they think the people want?

Post by Jany Xu

About two years out of college, I’ve started attending panels and discussions. There’s so much to be learned, and with marketing and communications moving at such a fast pace, I realized that my education has just begun. Surprisingly, I’m enjoying the quest.

Last night’s panel at Swissnex, a forum dedicated to connecting Swiss companies with those on the West Coast, the topic was innovation and design and their contribution and sustainability of big business, a.k.a. the Fortune 500. Reena Jana from BusinessWeek did an excellent job moderating.

GM was brought up as the old dinosaur that lacked the processes to change, while GE became the epitome of companies who transformed it’s corporates structure to be able to continually innovate.

[Photo via Baia's Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.]

The point that stuck was that from a designer’s perspective, good innovation is something that the customers and designers both wanted. It’s the glue that held business and sustainability and marketing and engineering. I don’t necessarily agree. The struggle with marketing and engineering is that what the customers want doesn’t always overlap with why the engineers want to create. Of course, customers don’t always know what they want. Until BOSE designed super small speakers, their audience didn’t think it was an option. So how can companies know what’s the next best thing?

All the panelists agreed that focus groups and customer surveys rarely make a good indicator of if the product will do well in the market place. And just because a small group of evangelists at the company love the idea doesn’t necessarily correlate to a stellar sales record.

[Photo via Baia's Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.]

It’s a problem the companies deal with on a daily basis. Is there a one size fits all solution? Or will some companies follow the suggestions on the market, while others like BOSE and Apple simply continue forging ahead and presenting their audience with what they think the people want?

So I opted for an external disk. She savoured the tense look of fear on my face before crushing my compromised wish, “It’s R 1,000. Cash.”

So I landed up with a flashstick, which is fast running out of memory because we produce online videos, podcasts, audioslideshows and have a few thousand readings.

The plight of those who seek education in a digitised environment is a challenge. So what happens when the whole world is increasingly digitised? Well, a few of us get left behind. Or a whole continent – like Africa.

Sonaike’s study of the dilemma of Africa’s internet development shows that technology’s ability to transform  lives, while useful, would still prove futile without considering the different limitations of progress in Africa. Sonaike questions the utopian view of advocates who argue that technology could help alleviate social disparities. He writes, “the concern is that the telecommunication revolution may widen existing social gaps, creating two distinct classes of information haves and information have-nots. This concern is far from trivial.”

The money factor simply can’t be ignored, especially on a continent where finding clean water, food and shelter are a struggle for the majority of citizens. These marginalised people miss out on social development and are excluded from socio-economic progress . This disadvantage is most apparent  African schools. In a world where pupils struggle to get textbooks and uniform, is a laptop really a necessity?

Phumyeza Mnymana (left) & Chenne Botha from Grahamstown, South Africa, MXitng it up | Photo: Qudsiya Karrim

How can this situation be improved?

The commerce sector has been contributing to social development through the distribution of technology in underpriviledged education institutions. Public-private initiative have proved useful in underdeveloped sectors such as health, education and infrastructure. 

In Grahamstown, a terribly poverty-stricken town where schools have extensive water shortage and infrastructural problems, a company called eKhaya ICTand a US NGO, the Solar Electric Light Fund, opened the first solar powered computer laboratory in the Eastern Cape. ”The lab consists of 25 laptop computers, sponsored by Dell South Africa Development Fund, a local video streaming server, Internet access and a wireless network… all powered by solar energy,” reported Grocotts Mail. Project co-ordinators have also provided training and a digital curriculum to teachers. This is just one of several examples that shows the power of a private-public collaboration for digitising Africa. This helps both the pupils and the company establish a humanitarian brand. Often these initiatives are headed and funded by technogiant in the business sector – digital buiness impacting reality.

The MIT institute has established a social development intiative that could revolutionise how children are educated:  ”One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop”. Earlier this year, Mail and Guardian reported that children in Kliptown – which has no libraries or schools - received an educational facelift by OLPC. M&G reports that OLPC has distributed 100 000 laptops to schoolchildren in Uruguat which cost about $100 (R780) to manufacture. “They are the size of a textbook and lighter than a lunchbox. They can operate using different power sources, such as car batteries where electricity is not available; they can also be solar- or foot-powered… The laptops come pre-loaded with educational software, such as South African textbooks and matric set works…”

The $100 laptop could transform the lives of millions of underpriviledged children

Scientists have even been toying around with the idea of mobile education for pupils, using cellphones, iPods, laptops and digital cameras to learn in the classroom. Grocott’s Mailreported that some innovative uses of technology by some South African teachers. For example, Abdullah Sujee taught his students about themes in Cry the Beloved Country ”by interviewing anti-apartheid activists using their cellphones and video cameras. The footage was then played in class.” With a little original thinking, the possibilities of using mobile technology to compliment school curriculum could be a reality. At least in some schools.

A scientist gives a lecture on mobile learning during Scifest 2008, Grahamstown | Photo: Qudsiya Karrim

 The initiative is admirable and the project’s benefits are already appreciated by thousands of children around the world and businesses. A potential market gap to be exploited would be dogital text books and class resources, class assignment submission programs and homework assessors. Then we would really have entered a digital education age. But are we looking through rose-tinted glasses?

Left in the dust?

If school was a soccer field and technology the ball, would the playing field be even? One in every few thousand kids in a poverty stricken area gets a laptop. Great. How is this performance compared to the middle and upper class learners for whom a cellphone is a necessity and not having a laptop is unthinkable? How would the Department of Education standardise the  curriculum with such huge disparities in access to technology? How do we ensure that all pupils’ education is standardised, especially without regular class assessments? Or would technology simply allow us to avoid the whole education system and make home-learning preferable.

Mobile and digital learning is certainly progressive and it could be useful, it could not and should not replace and physical (and disciplinary) presence of teachers and principals. Moreover, we should be careful not to allow class and economic inequalities more power over the opportunities for future employment and quality of education. If we consider additional practical issues like the lack of face-to-face interaction with peers, learner self-discipline, and interpersonal social skills, it’s clear we need to step into the digital education future with a little caution.

One Laptop Per Child or $100 laptop is news these days across major dailies in INDIA. It’s marketed as a $100 venture. It’s real costs are around $180 as of today expected to come down to $100 by 2010. We must be quite stupid to believe this claim given the global inflation.

What’s the Vision ?

As per the website “To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning” .

I have a problem here with the highlighted words. They want to enforce an educational curriculum on our children. The laptop is a tool to just achieve that. The hardware portion goes onto say “The XO is a potent learning tool created expressly for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments.”

why is it specifically for children in developing countries ?

There are millions of Afro – African and Hispanic children across North America without proper access to enjoyable learning. Why not give them the laptop ? One wonders the need to come knocking at developing countries. In countries like INDIA, Bangladesh and African nations people don’t even have food to eat. We are talking about a $ 180 for learning.

Computer Engineers like me have caught work related health defeciencies. I wonder how much the country has to spend on medication for letting these kids look at laptops in their lap. Moreover, the natural learning process of writing on papers/notepad etc will severely be impacted. Infact, i feel this device as more of a hindarance to learning than really helping it.

Imagine a world in which every school-going child owns a laptop, no matter how poor his or her family is. In India alone, this would mean well over 300 million units. Sounds like a pipedream, right?

The One Laptop Per Child scheme is, on the face, a simple one: provide affordable ($100 or Rs 4,200), low-energy consuming (less than 2 watts), rugged laptops (called the XO laptop) to children in remote and impoverished areas.

The laptops come with built-in wireless (wi-fi) capability, so that children can create what’s called a ‘mesh wi-fi network’ that keeps them interconnected. They’ve achieved three parts of the four-pronged plan, Negroponte says, but the current price of Rs 8,000 is nearly twice the Rs 4,200 that the group envisages.

The Digital Bridge Foundation, part of mega-corporation the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has been tapped to help orchestrate the group’s initial forays into India.

But India presents more challenges than just scale. With only 3 per cent of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) dedicated to education, it means that about Rs 5,000 is spent each year per child.

Obviously, when the laptop alone exceeds such a paltry allowance, the plan faces a serious uphill battle. One way to circumvent this dilemma would be to make the XO laptops school property, so that many children could avail of one unit. But, according to Negroponte, this is a poor idea.

Source: Rediff

This IT news is provided from the One Net Technology Limited

According to foreign media reports, Microsoft’s Windows XP system designed for “100 laptop” computer has been developed and is expected listed in September.

As easy and 100 notebook PC, such as ultra-low-cost PC is not only prevalent in developing countries, is also popular in developed countries, Microsoft announced last December, is being developed to support the Windows XP system memory. By then, it will be better run in the 100 notebooks and other low-end devices.

Microsoft said at the time, from January 2008 onwards, the version of XP system will be in the 100 notebooks for testing. If everything goes smoothly, then the second quarter to achieve business.

100 laptop project is responsible for the OLPC Foundation chairman Nicholas Negroponte (Nicholas Negroponte) in April this year had said that 100 laptop computers might give up the Linux operating system, instead of Windows XP system.

Negroponte said: “uphold the use of Linux systems have hindered the popularity of 100 notebook, frighten away many potential users.” He also, for example, 100 notebook does not support the latest version of Flash animation, and in some children And education websites use this new technology.

Negroponte also said that while support for Windows and Linux dual-boot the 100 laptop is coming soon, which could result in 100 laptop will eventually give up completely switch to Linux and Windows systems.

Until the end of last year, 100 notebook were only sold 500,000 dollars, far lower than previously expected.

So the XO has come to Sri Lanka. 900 of them in fact. First question – why 900? I thought there was going to be 2 million of them?

Nine schools were chosen from the nine districts covering Sinhala and Tamil medium schools to conduct the pilot project where the World Bank would fund and monitor.

states this article on the launch of the XO laptop.

I look forward to the day that mainstream media in Sri Lanka produces a journalist capable of interrogating the very public failure of the XO to live up to its lofty ideals and steps out of the razzmatazz of launches at the Hilton Colombo to see how many XP laptops actually made it to the hands of children in the nine schools, how they use it and for what.

That may be a story worth reading.

Der OLPC-Laptop XO-2 soll der Nachfolger des 3. Welt-Laptops werden. Er kommt mit 2 Touchscreens daher.

Dadurch sollen verschiedene “Modi” ermöglicht werden, zum Beispiel die Nutzung wie ein Laptop mittels Touchscreen-Tastatur, flach auf dem Tisch als großer Tablet oder wie ein Buch zum Beispiel zum Lesen von E-books. Der neue 3. Welt Laptop soll nur 75$ kosten!
“Aufgrund des Feedbacks von Regierungen, Lehrenden und vor allem der Kinder selbst arbeiten wir zielstrebig daran, Kosten, Strombedarf und Größe des XO-Laptops zu reduzieren”, erklärte Negroponte. Geplanter Start des neuen Modells sei 2010.

Mit dem XO-2 will OLPC darüber hinaus den Stromverbrauch des Dritte-Welt-Notebooks nochmals deutlich reduzieren. Schon der aktuelle XO habe mit zwei bis vier Watt etwa ein Zehntel des Strombedarfs von regulären Laptops, so das Projekt. Der Nachfolger soll sogar mit nur einem Watt auskommen. Davon profitierten besonders Kinder in entlegenen Regionen, die das Gerät beispielsweise per Handkurbel manuell betreiben müssten. Eine Halbierung der Größe auf “ungefähr die Maße eines Buches” und die damit verbundene Gewichtsreduktion werde es Kindern zudem erleichtern, den Laptop mit in die Schule zu nehmen.

Die technologischen Verbesserungen sollen auch die Kosten des XO-2 gegenüber dem Vorgänger reduzieren. “Neue Entwicklungen in Display-, Prozessor- und anderer Hard- und Softwaretechnologie werden es erlauben, in Zukunft das Ziel von 75 Dollar zu erreichen”, so OLPC. Der inzwischen rund 600.000 mal verkaufte “100-Dollar-Laptop” XO kostet nach Angaben des Projekts immer noch 188 Dollar.

MUDGE’s Musings

We return to a popular (at least to yr (justifiably) humble svt) topic here in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©. Previously:

In an apparent blow to the true-believing open source community, OLPC and Microsoft have reached an agreement to make Windows available on the XO laptop.

It is only fitting that the NYTimes’ story has as its header a photograph of students in India praying before class time, since there is no doubt that in the world of personal computing technology, operating systems are a religious choice. Windows vs. Apple vs. Open Source (mainly, Linux).

Pal Pillai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Students pray before working on their computers in Vasti Vidhalaya, India. The XO laptop comes with a video camera.

Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children

By STEVE LOHR |Published: May 16, 2008

After a years-long dispute, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child said Thursday that they had reached an agreement to offer Windows on the organization’s computers.

Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.

The group’s small, sturdy laptops, designed for use by children in developing nations, have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries, and initial sales were slow, partly because countries were reluctant to buy machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system.

Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education, but many see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a marketable skill that can improve job prospects.

Nicholas Negroponte, the visionary who has championed One Laptop Per Child from an outrageously impractical idea (a $100 computer suitable in every way to provide educational computing to the most remote of the developing world’s children) to spectacular realization, is, unlike many idealists, a practical business operative. 600,000 of the machines have been sold to governments so far, a most impressive number.

The kids don’t care about what operating system runs their shiny green boosters to the endless world of knowledge, but then they don’t buy the XOs either.

Governments do (paying about $200 each thus far, although Negroponte’s goal is for economies of scale to get the eventual price down to that [ever more elusive, in these inflationary times] $100), and government education ministry bureaucrats understand Windows but they do not want to understand open source. For many governments, providing computers to young school children is less about opening up access to the gigantic world beyond their villages, and more about teaching marketable computer skills.

And, if adding Windows to the XO makes the program more palatable to the guys holding the purse strings, and Microsoft can be persuaded to price Windows appropriately, then OLPC can deliver both world wonder and practical PC skills.

Sounds like win-win to me.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children – New York Times

Of course, Mr. Negroponte’s pragmatism has offended open source zealots, but I believe that this is not a zero-sum issue. The kids whose governments opt for the Windows version will very probably eventually get machines that include a ported version of the simplified Sugar software, certainly appropriate for exploratory self-managed inquiring education.

And, learning their way around Windows will certainly speed their integration into the global network of business.

So, my congratulations to One Laptop Per Child, Nicholas Negroponte and to Microsoft and Bill Gates, for finally reaching common ground. After all, it’s about educating the world’s most deprived children.

Regardless of the the children’s religion, or the computers’.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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India was one country that rejected outright Negronponte’s suspect vision of the OLPC as an “educational” tool. Nearly a year ago, I expressed my own doubts that the OLPC, seen as a replacement for teachers, could be taken seriously. Earlier this year, the high profile resignation of Ivan Krstić led to more public questions on the future of the OLPC. 

Ivan’s latest post on the OLPC is a damning indictment of Negroponte’s vision. Read the Ars Technica synopsis and analysis here and the original post here.

The OLPC looks dead in the water. About time too. 

Not long ago, OLPC undertook a drastic internal restructuring coupled with what, despite official claims to the contrary, is a radical change in its goals and vision from those that were shared with me when I was invited to join the project.

so writes Ivan Krstić, who resigned as the director of security architecture for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project recently.

As this Ars Technica article on the issue points out, the XO laptop has been plagued with a litany of issues, from its rising cost of production to the many ways in which is has simply NOT sold according to early hype and expectation. The articles ends by saying that “At this stage, it seems unlikely that OLPC will be able to fulfill all of its ambitious goals.“

That’s putting it lightly.

Also read my other articles exploring the potential and pitfalls of the OLPC:
Porn on the “$100″ PC
ICT4Peace, OLPC and Technology for Social Change – A conversation with Paul Currion
To be or not to be – The $100 laptop
From the Sinclair ZX81 to OLPC’s Sugar

Well, it’s half the price of the eee, has half the memory and does indeed run Linux. The only question is, why is it so butt ugly? The One just isn’t the one for me, I’m afraid.

Admittedly, it’s not aimed at the everyday consumer (it’s being unveiled at an education show, for goodness’ sake), but the way it looks (check the link) just does nothing for me. In terms of design the eee is respectable, and the Cloudbook’s slightly odd gap between keyboard and screen makes it at least stand out a little bit, but this one is just a brick with a capital b. So Brick. With a little flimsy keyboard attached. How it will even open without toppling over is beyond me.

Oh well, at least it runs Linux, I suppose. Although I might blog later about why its design is a problem. Depends how much I can concentrate on Chaucer.