On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:47 AM, -- Nicholas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I was referred to this group by someone, so this is a shot in the dark > :-) I am not sure if any of you are involved in OLPC efforts both in > India and worldwide. Here are a few basic facts: The OLPC project is > based largely on Fedora (7 and 9) and runs on XO laptops that are > powered by a 433MHz x86 Geode processor with 256 MB RAM. The laptop > itself consumes a max of 8 watts. There are approx 600,000 OLPC XO > laptops in the field with children worldwide - the next generation - > with 55,000 laptops shipping out each month. Sounds like fun, doesn't > it? ;-) > > Don't worry about shots in the dark :) You have netted quite a few fish. I > have visited the OLPC office at MIT, at Cambridge, MA in 2006, and have > closely interacted with Samuel > on content. I'm curious about the project status. They were supposed to > release it in December 2006. How successful is the project till date? > > --Nicholas > > > Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download > Now! http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php
Hi Nicholas, Success is subjective ;-) However, considering that the outfit is about 26 people + volunteers, the fact that they shipped about 600k laptops in one year is success in my opinion. Most of the deployment reports are up on http://wiki.laptop.org/ Look for Peru, Uruguay, Mongolia, etc. A page with deployment details are up at What's needed is awareness that the laptop is not just another cheap laptop. There is a complete learning philosophy that underlies the project, where it allows the XO to be a simple laptop to surf the web, read e-books, etc. but can also switch over into an overdrive of sorts and become a collaborative platform. For instance you can use a word processor on two XOs and write a letter together, in real time. Think of it as an IM within a word processor type deal. Additionally, you can do this without being on the Internet, because the XOs talk to each other over Wi-Fi in a mesh or peer-to-peer mode. The Wi-Fi usually works across 700+ feet. We've run links across 2000 feet in San Francisco, and a guy in Australia has run links across 2km. It is difficult to explain these features to grown-ups who are conditioned to computers; they've never seen anything like it. Children are a lot more receptive. In their minds, everything is new and discoverable. In my professional opinion, this project is perhaps one of the most innovative IT projects *ever*. The best part is that a good proportion of its success relies on communities and contributors. Meritocracy at its best. cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
