Some Less-Than-Thrilled OLPC Reviews

The Economist: One Clunky Laptop Per Child

“It would be a stunt, but one perhaps worth performing, to write
this column on the tiny, green and white, $200 XO computer from One
Laptop Per Child (OLPC) that sits idle before your columnist. Alas,
he cannot.

“This is not because the keys are too small for his adult hands
(though they are), or because the processor’s slow speed makes the
machine frustrating to use (though it does). Nor is it because the
track pad sometimes goes screwy and the keys lack the normal
pressed-key response that allows smooth typing. It isn’t even
because moving the column from the word-processing application to
the web-mail system is prohibitively difficult…”

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Beyond Binary: Gates on OLPC, Windows Home Server

“Q: One area that I know is important to you is emerging
markets. Do you take away any lessons from Intel’s fallout with
OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)? I know you said recently that you are
going to try and make Windows work on OLPC if you can?

“Gates: OLPC hasn’t done that well. Emerging markets are growing
for PCs, people are doing cheap PCs. We’ve always believed in cheap
PCs. If the hardware were free, we’d be happy. We’re about the
software. We’re in literally over 100 countries with special
versions of Windows, including Starter Edition. OLPC is nowhere
compared to where we are on this thing. If that form factor, some
people want to use that, we’ll make sure Windows is available on
that…”

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Story