more about the OLPC and its competition

Hey everyone,

Here is the article that I chose for week 13

We have all probably heard a lot about Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child, and most people can agree that the biggest attraction to this product is that it was developed so that they can be distributed to needy children all over the world. Since we have all seen them in class, I will not describe how they look, but I’m sure most of you will agree they seem as if they will be very appealing for all young children. Last year, Negroponte said that they would be producing 1 million laptops per month, which makes OLPC a powerhouse from the start, because collectively all of laptop manufacturers worldwide produce about 5 million units per month.

What most of us perhaps didn’t know was that other computer companies became threatened by the OLPC project and created similar computers but for reasons of profit. Intel for example, developed a similar laptop called Classmate and is charging $250 for it. This run ones Windows or Linux, while the OLPCs XO laptop is based on an AMD processor and runs Linux. During an interview, when Negroponte was asked about that competition, he replied “when someone is selling something below cost in competition with you its called dumping, and when you’re the one taking that approach you call it forward pricing.” He goes on to say that “what Intel is doing is predatory- we know what its cost are… and it doesn’t benefit the children OLPC is trying to help. Intel should be ashamed of itself.” The computer that Intel created is also behind the OLPC as it doesn’t support the feature that enables the children to interact with each other. It also doesn’t have the alternative ways to power the unit like the OLPC does. There are people who are skeptical of these new computers, and are not sure if they will do the Third World nation much good, but from seeing one, and briefly understanding what it is capable of, it is obviously that any child who gets one of these computers will love it, and that these computers will defiantly encourage and allow children to enhance their education through technology at a young age. It would be interesting to hear about whether or not these laptops have been successful in both the developed nations and the Third World countries, so if anyone has heard anything about either the OLPC laptop, or the one that Intel made, please feel free to share.

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