[Sugar-devel] The future of Sugar on XO-1s

[Tony Anderson]

Dave

The computer industry operates on 'price points'. The problem for it is 
that a chip manufacturer cannot afford to produce many variations on its
chips. Therefore, artificial means are used to create a range of 
products (hence, overclocking). A 'cheap' computer is one produced for a 
lower
price point Typically this means less Ram, slower clock, and so on. 
However, the capabilities of computers at a given price point tend to 
increase
from year to year. For example, for many years laptops were equipped 
with a 320GB hard drive. This year, 1TB has become common at the same
price-point.

The computers you cited as 'cheapest' were ones that did not provide the 
essential peripherals: monitor, keyboard, WIFi, camera, microphone, ability
to measure via the microphone jack, a case, and so on. In this case 
'cheapness' results from eliminating the cost of these components.

I think that Pi Zero is a scam because it is not possible to obtain one 
and so the product is not real.

The nominal cost of an XO is $200 (this number is useful for planning 
purposes for a new deployment). XOs have never been 'on the market' in the
sense that you could go to a vendor and order one. That would require 
serial production (units built independent of orders in hand). However, 
unlike Pi Zero,
OLPC never claimed the units to be available on the market.

I hope that answers your questions.

Tony



On 06/09/2016 01:33 AM, Dave Crossland wrote:
> Hi Tony
>
> I am eager to read your response to my questions below :)
>
> On 30 May 2016 at 09:38, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> On 30 May 2016 at 00:00, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:
>>> I am not sure I understand your reference to 'cheapest computers'.
>>
>> The cheap computers of any year are always much slower, have less RAM, etc
>> etc, than median computers of that year.
>>
>>> As far as I can tell, the Raspberry Pi Zero is a scam.
>>
>> I didn't understand this at all, but after some web searches, I guess you
>> mean that (per
>> http://betanews.com/2015/12/17/the-5-dollar-raspberry-pi-zero-is-too-damn-expensive/)
>> the Pi Zero requires a bunch of peripherals that bring the Total Cost of
>> Ownership up to the same as a regular Pi.
>>
>> Thanks for bringing this to my attention :)
>>
>>> The pocketchip illustrates
>>> the problem with the Raspberry Pi. Once you add the components needed to
>>> make a useful, deployable computer - the cost is greater than that of
>>> an XO.
>>
>> I still don't understand this, though. What do you think the cost of an XO
>> is, and what do you think the cost of a Pi is, and what do you think the
>> cost of a PocketCHiP is?
>>
>>> I have yet to see a computer on the market that offers the capabilities of
>>> the XO for olpc deployments.
>>
>> Are XOs on the market?
>>
>>> On a separate note. I looked at the Vision proposal. It certainly deserves
>>> a close look. However, I tried to find out what are 'best practices' only to
>>> be shown a perfect example of very bad practice. I followed a series of
>>> links only to find not one explained what a best practice is or who decides
>>> on
>>> what is 'best'. I hope we can do a better job of documentation than that.
>>
>> I agree the link wasn't totally clear, so I added a direct link to the page
>> to https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cheers
>> Dave
>
>