Patrice Riemens on Sun, 30 May 2010 23:08:56 +0200 (CEST)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

<nettime> OLPC drops PC and goes tablet ...


The ways of Lord Nicholas Negroponte are impenetrable....


Original at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/gadget-special/Coming-soon-100-Tablet-PC/articleshow/5984155.cms
(http://bit.ly/bqyhfn)

bwo Sarai Reader List/ Shubhranshu Choudhary

Coming soon: $100 Tablet PC

SEATTLE: The nonprofit organization that has tried to produce a $100
laptop for children in the world's poorest places is throwing in the
towel on that idea -- and jumping on the tablet bandwagon.

One Laptop Per Child's next computer will be based on chipmaker
Marvell Technology Group Ltd's Moby tablet design. Marvell announced a
prototype of the device this year and said it costs about $99.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, is optimistic
his organization will be able to keep the price under $100 in part
because Marvell plans to market its tablets widely to schools and
health care institutions.

"We want to see the price drop, and volume is the key to that,"
Negroponte said.

The quirky green and white XO laptop sold by One Laptop Per Child
(OLPC) to governments and organizations in countries such as
Afghanistan and Uruguay wasn't destined for such a broad audience.
OLPC had to repeatedly scale back expectations for how many of the
laptops it could produce, and it didn't get the price much below $200,
twice the price specified by the device's "$100 laptop" nickname.

In 2005, Negroponte envisioned having built 100 million laptops in
about two years. Today, 2 million of the machines are in use.

The XO was also more expensive to produce than a tablet would be
because of its many moving parts and features meant to withstand
glaring sun, blowing sand and spotty access to electricity. In some
cases, OLPC had to change the XO's design by region. For example, the
physical keyboard had to be customised for students in countries that
don't use a Latin alphabet. It would be less expensive to change the
software behind touch-screen keyboards.

Marvell's co-founder, Weili Dai, said the company has also found ways
to cut costs in the way it's designing the chips.

The new tablets will have at least one, and maybe two, video cameras.
They'll sport Wi-Fi connections to the Internet, "multi-touch" screens
and have enough power to play high-definition and 3D video. Marvel
hopes to make the screens 8.5 inches by 11 inches, the size of a
standard sheet of paper. Unlike Apple Inc's iPad tablet, the device
will also work with plug-in peripherals such as mice.




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org