APCUG Reports
January-March 2008

There are many possibilities for your UG, no matter what the size of your UG is. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, http://laptop.org/, is a project, which requires a minimum of time or volunteer resources, so it is ideal for every UG.

There has been a lot of news lately about this project, such as:

• Did you know that the “Get One, Give One” campaign is still open for business? This campaign allows Americans and Canadians to purchase 2 OLPC XO laptops for $399, where one laptop is given to a child in the developing world and you get the other laptop.
  Several members of the DFW IT Pro UG have made these purchases and then donated the computers that they received to needy native-American children.
• Have you heard about Project America or Project Europe?
  Project America is scheduled to be launched in 2008. While the OLPC project focuses on the developing world, Project America will focus on needy children in America. Project Europe is a similar project, which will focus on the needy children in Europe and discussions are under way, where it would also be launched in 2008.
• Did you know that OLPC is working with Microsoft to develop a dual-boot Windows (XP) and Linux OS?
  On January 9, it was announced that Microsoft and the OLPC project are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, according to Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman of OLPC.

Microsoft has embraced the open-source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. The OLPC laptop currently is running on a Fedora-based Linux operating system and Microsoft has offered a version of Windows XP for the laptop project.

No doubt, almost everyone has heard about MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative, http://laptop.org/. This is a non-profit project, which Negroponte has set up as a result of his volunteer work in Cambodia.

The OLPC XO laptop is rugged, durable and it contains leading edge technology that is currently not available from other hardware vendors.

As originally conceived, the XO laptop display used LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) in the form of a projector. The laptop began to evolve with a dual-mode display, which included both a conventional color LED laptop screen and the other a sunlight-readable, black-and-white e-book. This concept made abundant sense for the developing world, where outdoor classes are the norm and textbooks are frequently not available to these students.

The One Laptop Per Child project is an ambitious project, which brings computing to the developing world’s children, has gained considerable momentum. This is particularly important because the cost for governments to purchase textbooks and other educational materials is prohibitive. The XO laptop can include these educational materials with a very minimal cost. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production has been started.

Orders, however, are slow. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”

But Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, views the problem as a temporary one in the long-term pursuit of using technology as a new channel of learning and self-expression for children worldwide.

And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.

The machines have high-resolution screens, cameras and peer-to-peer technology, so the laptops can communicate wirelessly with one another. The machine runs on free, open source software. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Mr. Bender, a computer researcher. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”

The machine, called the XO Laptop, was not engineered with affluent children in mind. It was intended to be inexpensive, with costs eventually approaching $100 a machine, and sturdy enough to withstand harsh conditions in rural villages. It is also extremely energy efficient, with power consumption that is 10 percent or less of a conventional laptop computer.

The laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August, 2007. The results were reassuringly positive. The focus-group subjects liked the fact that the machine was intended specifically for children, and appreciated features like the machine-to-machine wireless communication. “Completely beastly” was the verdict of one boy. Another environmentally conscious youngster noted that the laptop “prevents global warming.”

Still, the “Give 1 Get 1” initiative is mainly about the giving. “The real reason is to get this thing started,” Mr. Negroponte said.

He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.

“It could trigger a lot of things,” Mr. Negroponte said.

The project has had successes. Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas. Mexico and Uruguay, Mr. Negroponte noted, have made firm commitments. In a sponsorship program, the government of Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia.

APCUG’s Project X

Linda Moore
Director – APCUG
lmoore@apcug.net
President, DFW IT Pro Users Group
lhmoore@dfwitpug.org