I want one for my children

[Wahalla]

Up to 10 million units by the end of the year says Quanta

This week the OLPC group announced that it has finally sealed a confirmed order of one million units of the XO laptop. Originally, the group announced that Nigeria was the first to place an order for one million units, but later revealed that Nigeria was only considering and did not confirm the order. Later on, Libya announced its confirmed order of 1.2 million units but did not indicate whether or not it would purchase all of the units at once or in batches.

The confirmed order this week for the XO machines is a combined order made from several countries: Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay. The main manufacturer for the XO units will be Quanta, which confirmed to reporters this week the mass production of the laptops. Quanta indicated that the laptops will cost each country roughly $130 USD but will drop down to $100 with further production.

According to Quanta, there is a potential to ship up to 10 million XO units in 2007. A total of seven countries have signed up to purchase the units. Interestingly, Quanta indicated that its margin on the laptops were very low, to keep the nonprofit goals of the OLPC project. "OLPC is a nonprofit organization, but Quanta is a contract manufacturer, a for-profit business. We can't not charge a fee for making the laptops," indicated a Quanta representative.

Some analysts expect that the price for the XO machines will drop sooner than expected because of competition. Intel announced its Classmate PC late last year along with the Encore Mobilis tablet. Intel is currently testing its Classmate PC in Brazil.


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[j-kid]

Re: I want one for my children

Intel's Classmate PC to go head to head with OLPC in Brazil
Posted Dec 6th 2006 11:48AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Laptops

Given the quite disparate price points -- around $400 for Intel's fledgling Classmate PC, $140 for the cute little OLPC -- we would think the two different machines wouldn't be treading on each other's toes too terribly much at this time, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Brazil. Intel just committed to donating 700-800 of the Classmate PCs for a large in-school evaluation. Brazil will be pitting the laptop up against an OLPC prototype they just got in the mail, along with another similarly education-bent laptop from an Indian company. "We're going to put it in the classroom and see how it does," says Jose Aquinto. Walter Bender of the OLPC camp welcomes the competition: "The only way the price is going to continue to go down is competition in the marketplace." Sure sounds like they're getting it.
Source



The Mobilis, Encore's inexpensive mobile PC
Posted May 11th 2005 1:46PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops


A Bangalore-based company is the latest to get in on the recent trend of cheap computers, following Nicholas Negroponte's $100 PC, VIA's $250 PC, and AMD's cheap Personal Internet Communicator. Encore Software, with the backing of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, has developed three different PCs ranging in price from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000 (between $230 and $460US). The basic model is the Softcom, a desktop with a 15-inch monitor, moving up a bit is the Mobilis, a Linux-based mobile desktop with a 7.4-inch LCD screen, and at the top of the heap is the Mobilis Wireless, which adds a built-in GPS receiver and GPRS wireless modem. None of the systems apparently come with a hard drive, with storage instead being handled through memory cards. Despite that, the company says they'll be able to handle regular applications like word processing, spreadsheets, personal information managers, e-mail and web-browsers, and even play movies and music. They'll also have text-to-speech conversion and built-in local-language support. Look for them to hit the market in about three months.

Source

[Gen]

Re: I want one for my children

so remind me agian why I am shopping for 1000+ Imac ? [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[j-kid]

Re: I want one for my children

Fi di increased flexibility, name, and media marketing, I guess. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

[Rebycman]

Re: I want one for my children

Oooh another cool feature, anti-theft! Very good idea really.

"Ars Technica reports that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO has an anti-theft daemon in the OS that can be used to remotely disable machines, much like WGA. The Project added the kill switch at the behest of a few countries concerned about laptop theft. From the report, 'OLPC has responded to such concerns by developing an anti-theft daemon that the project claims cannot be disabled, even by a user with root access. Participating countries can then provide identifying information such as a serial number to a given country's OLPC program oversight entity, which can then disable the devices in certain scenarios.'"