[IAEP] Questions for SCaLE 11X

[Ron Feigenblatt]

On 2/20/13, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Also, if you think of anything else people are likely to ask that
> isn't listed here, please include the question and, if you know it, the
> answer.

Q. I thought this was (circa 2005) a "$100 laptop" whose price could
"only go down over time due to Moore's Law."

A. When it was complete, it first turned out to be a $188(?) laptop.
And the MINIMAL configuration model unit price STILL (2013) is
something like that. Why? To figure this out, I'd start by asking what
do the components cost, and what does manufacturing. If component
costs were not falling, I'd ask if OLPC was raising the hardware base
over time, rather than staying with the equivalents of the original
components, if still available. Does holding the sticker price help
reduce TCO over time, or is this a matter of aiming at the price point
where incipient demand is greatest (affordably better user
experience)?

Q. I thought this was a machine for the world's "poorest" children.
According to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments, as of January
2011, at which point there were roughly 2 million XOs units, the
biggest deployments, accounting for over 3 of 4 machines, were in
Uruguay (420,000 + 100,000 + 40,000) = 560,000 and
Peru (290,000 + 580,000 + 110,000) = 980,000

And per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product , the (non-PPP)
numbers for these countries and the world in 2011 were:
Uruguay--US$13,866
Peru---------US$5,904
World-------US$10,359 = ( US$69.11 trillion / US$79.39 trillion ) x  US$11,900.

So that the OLPC seems to be overwhelmingly (3/4+) for children whose
nation has a nominal GDP per capita no less than 43% below the world
average. While it is wonderful to try helping so-called middle-income
countries, is this what OLPC had in mind all along? And if the price
of the machine hasn't fallen in 8 years, what sort of help can the
masses in poor countries expect, and when? Are machines like the
Aakash aka Sakshat just pipe dreams?

A. An important strength of the OLPC XO series is how rugged and
compatible with hostile rural environments it is, and how easy it is
to repair, something the new low-cost tablets don't begin to address.
It is not impossible that simpler machines, e.g. those based on audio
alone, could do a lot of good in helping the very poorest people in
the world. The growing availability of cellphones, even in the poorest
countries, is surely a potential platform for learning materials.

With the advent of the new tablet, it is clear that OLPC seems to be
raising, rather than lowering, the mean income level of its target
market spread - new unit sales of tablets to homes in high-income
nations, plus the traditional bulk sales of rugged laptops to school
systems mainly in middle- (but also in some high- & low-) income
nations.

Q. Is the OLPC XO series still needed? Since it was on the
drawing-board, the price of entry-level computers and appliances (e.g.
ebook readers) has plummeted, with a whole world of netbooks come and
gone, and an ever-increasing supply of tablets and smartphones.

A. Again, the XO is a ruggedized machine - not a trivial consideration
when dealing with K-6 students. It is easy and cheap to do basic
repairs. And it is backed by a suite of free software based on Sugar
and a community of developers. Two entire nations have made deep and
expensive commitments to using the XO, and OLPC has a moral
responsibility to see that they are not pushed off a cliff due to the
evaporation of needed hardware. (At the same time, Sugar Labs has made
Sugar available for free for installation on commodity PC gear.) Even
today, a nation like Australia, which could afford to spend much more
money on PCs, has elected to buy 55,000 XO units.

Q. Will OLPC license key technologies to for-profit laptop makers?
Have any for-profit firms expressed an interest in doing that?

A. ???

Q. Are used XOs resold on eBay et alia? What price do they fetch these days?

A. ???

Caryl, I assume you were a G1G1 person. If you ever go somewhere to do
demos, I think it would be interesting if you could bring along BOTH
an XO and a low-end laptop, showing how easy and quick it is to use
SoaS on the latter in a non-conflicting way. This would also allow you
to show how networking between the two machines works. With sufficient
scripting, I think this would also make a great
DailyMotion/YouTube/whatever video for Sugar Labs.

Good luck!
Ron