[IAEP] The Guardian: PlayPower: 1980s computing for the 21st century

[Yama Ploskonka]

Elonex One clones are available right now for about $75 USD in
quantities over 100.  They were released original well after the XO 1,
and have about similar hardware.  Originally they sold for about $300.

The XO seems to be about the only one defying Moore's :-)

While the (heavily subsidized) pricepoint of $200 was totally amazing
in 2007, right now it is rather unimpressive

On 11/8/09, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:
> Martin Langhoff wrote:
>> Interesting. Though the challenge they have -- localising closed src
>> binaries... to non ASCII-using locales -- is rather hard.
>
> The non ASCII is a complication, but changing binaries was very popular
> in Brazil in the 1980s (the copyright law here was only extended to
> software in 1987). A serious limitation of this project is that just
> because the machines are openly being sold in a market in India (here in
> Brazil too, but closer $100 than $12...) doesn't mean that there are no
> legal issues. Nintendo is simply ignoring them as few units are sold
> compared to normal PCs or modern videogame consoles. If this project is
> a success and sales increase significantly, this could quickly change.
>
> It is odd that the article talks about expired patents as the reason for
> lower prices. Most early machines weren't even patented: the original PC
> (1981) wasn't, the PC AT (1984) had seven patents in all and the PS/2
> (1987) was the first one that IBM tried to seriously protect and it
> backfired on them. The main factor for the low costs is Moore's law: you
> can either get twice the transistors for the same price in 18 months or
> the same transistors for about half the cost.
>
> The PC industry has mostly followed the first option while the OLPC was
> explicitly created to take advantage of the decreasing costs curve
> instead. Building in 2007 what was essentially a mid range laptop from
> 1997 got you an entirely new price point. If we imagine the Famicom (the
> current $12 computer) in 1985 with about $30 of electronics and the
> Commodore Amiga with $300 in the same year, in 1997 eight cycles of
> Moore's law would have passed and we would have $0.12 and $1.17 of
> electronics in modern remakes of these machines. Except that packaging
> and testing would be about the same for both options and the costs of
> the case and keyboard would totally dominate the sales price.
>
> I guess the point of trying to make educational use of a $12 Famicom
> (NES in the USA) instead of a more reasonable $13 Amiga is that the
> first exists and is being sold right now. But like I said, the volumes
> are not impressive. If the numbers are to be expanded to cover whole
> poor countries then the investment that has to be made could certainly
> support a little development, right? It has been done before:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV
>
> The reason why I said the Amiga was more "reasonable" is that the
> PlayPower plan is to allow people to connect to the Internet. Even the
> Commodore 64 has a new operating system (Contiki) that allows that in a
> very limited way, but the Famicom is just too weak.
>
> I would love to see a project like this be a massive success, but don't
> think the path they are taking is the best option.
>
> -- Jecel
>
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