Comparing the OLPC, Classmate and Eee 188
ZDOne writes "Small and inexpensive notebooks have been a hot topic in recent months as the Classmate, XO laptop, and the Asus Eee go head-to-head with each other for the low end/educational market. ZDNet has a look at all three systems, comparing the three platforms on multiple points of data to determine which of the three fits your needs. 'In terms of overall stylishness the Eee is the winner, but the XO and the Classmate are both more rounded and rugged, and come with carrying handles. The OLPC XO has the biggest screen, an innovative 7.5in. dual-mode transmissive/reflective LCD that can swivel from traditional clamshell mode to 'e-book' mode with the screen facing outwards, tablet-style (although it's not a touch-screen). The Classmate and Eee both have similar, rather cramped, 7in. TFT displays. '"
Can one develop software on the XO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lately I've been entertaining the idea of moving to somewhere in the developing world where all the kids have XOs, and teaching them to code.
I've seen two maps of the Earth that led to this idea. One was a photo of the entire Earth taken at night, made from many satellite photos mosaiced together. The other is a live display that they have in a lobby at Google, that shows a real-time display of queries submitted to their search engine, in the form of bright spikes whose height is proportional to the rate of query submissions.
In both of these, most of the world was lit up - except for Africa. South Africa had some light, but most of Africa was dark.
Maybe if we taught African kids to write software, they could start businesses that would make their lives better.
Re:Can one develop software on the XO? (Score:5, Informative)
'Hides' is probably the wrong word. One of the activities is a terminal, with which you can browse the conventional Linux filesystem normally. You can SSH into the XO, and use terminal commands to install new software. You can even install a new desktop environment (e.g. xfce) to replace sugar if you prefer. It's a low-power machine, but it's running a full-featured Linux distro.
I do recommend Python for beginners (Score:3, Interesting)
It happens that I studied Russian in college. After the fall of the Soviet Union, I had a similar idea, not so much to teach kids but to help exisiting Russian software engineers start software businesses so they could trade with the West.
I happened to meet Esther Dyson when she came to speak at Apple, where I worked at the time. She had traveled extensively in Russia, trying to bootstrap the software industry. When I told her my idea, she grabbed my arm and impe
Funny you mention Python. (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all apps in Sugar are written in Python and their code is readily available and freely editable from inside Sugar. They are safely sandboxed so you won't break anything permanently, but you're encouraged to modify existing ones and write new ones - using the libraries in the system.
The laptop is meant to reveal its layers to the kid as the kid's experience grows. First - games and activities accessible by big, friendly buttons. Then, two of the activities are different programming toys - procedural, building program from bricks, and event-driven one. You gain basics of programming. Then you press a specific button and you get the source of the underlying app. At first you learn by modifying it, editing it - change colors, change texts, maybe move things around a bit. The python code is clean and well commented. Then you can try your own "hello world" and write your own python software that will run under Sugar. As you become expert at Python, you'll learn to use the mysterious "terminal" thing and write without GUI, download other libraries and languages. Nothing is unavailable, but to make sense of some parts you need experience in the easier ones. A 6yo who just begins to learn reading won't find Python sources very interesting, and won't mess with them at least until the brick-language becomes too limiting.
Re: (Score:2)
When they get older, they can get a real computer and learn Perl :-)
[Hey, it's Monday!]
Re: (Score:2)
When I connect an external keyboard, I turn the display around on the XO and angle it away from me, so that the XO's keyboard is behind the screen, rather than in front. I find this to be more comfortable.
You may have already considered this, but nobody I've demonstrated this to had figured it out for themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
XO activities store files in a keyed datastore hosted on the filesystem, so for the most part you are protected from the filesystem, but it is still there if you need it e.g. for development.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They need to earn foreign exchange... (Score:5, Insightful)
I applaud the efforts of government and charity to improve living conditions by donating money, but it won't be sustainable until those in need can earn the money through the sweat of their own brows.
Look at what it's doing for India, that they built the Indian Institutes of Technology, whose graduates are now doing software development for worldwide customers.
And yes, I realize this isn't patriotic.
Re:They need to earn foreign exchange... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget bicycles! They were on the roads before cars, and are still on the roads today.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would government seek to build it either?
It's not as if governments don't seek to control their own populations...
I want to ride my bicycle (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Re:They need to earn foreign exchange... (Score:5, Informative)
1) A basic paved road, with maintenance, infrastructure to create fuel, infrastructure to transport fuel, infrastructure to create cars, infrastructure to maintain cars, training in driving, compensation for human error
2) A basic rail system, with maintenance, a renewable energy system, with maintenance
The rail system has a greater upfront cost, but negligible ongoing cost. They did feasibility studies in my region, and determined that it would take around 20 million dollars to set it up.
They didn't have the budget, and they're not allowed to save for next year or their funding gets reduced, so they instead blew their 5 million buying buses that kneel to let disabled passengers on and have a signal system to change traffic lights.
Total waste of money, doesn't fix the transportation problems, leaves us relying on fossil fuels, and if the political system allowed them to save up for new infrastructure with their federal money, they could have paid for it in less than 5 years with the money they wasted on nothing at all.
Someone here is ignorant and naive, but it isn't me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for the buses- people in wheelchairs are human too. They deserve access to public transportation. That means they need buses that have some sort of ramp or kneeling system.
Re: (Score:2)
Same applies to disabled people--in the United States where we have the resources to do so, we are able force people to see to their needs. Elsewhere, this really can't be a primary concern, and such things
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2) A basic rail system, with maintenance, a renewable energy system, with maintenance (emphasis mine)
The renewable energy part is a problem. You think you're going to put sails on an AmTrak train? Find a windfarm large enough to power an electric train that would have to continuously carry millions of people? Only let people commute downhill?
As for the budget projection, I'd refer you to the success (or lack thereof) of the "Big Dig" in Massachusetts. Or any government "budget." I'd also be wary a
Re: (Score:2)
Where is your region? That's an order of magnitude lower than the costs I've seen for first-world urban light rail projects.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wake up at local noon, plus or minus two hours.
Go out of your mom's basement.
Look up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I have, too. Are you sure that re-introducing slave labor is a good idea?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
how can people like you continue to pop up after we beat the shit out of you every time?
here's a hint... the OLPC is not for the dying children with flies on their faces ok
get a fucking clue asshole, you're subverting everyone's efforts to make the world better
Re:Can one develop software on the XO? (Score:5, Interesting)
In many places they have water and they used to have farms. Then the US (and other countries) dumped produce on their market below the true cost (subsidized) such that local farmers could not compete. So the local farmers were undercut, couldn't pay their taxes and are now unemployed and homeless. It isn't that they don't know how to farm. It is that they can't make enough money farming to get by. They might be able to compete despite the unfair price of imported food if they could use modern practices, but they don't have the industrial infrastructure needed to make the heavy equipment and fertilizers and irrigation systems and they don't have the capital to buy it. The money needed to fund such a project would be way, way, way more than what is spent on the OLPC project.
Truthfully, there really isn't a better industry than intellectual property creation for high returns on low initial investment. This doesn't necessarily mean programming (in Python not C, since that is what ships with OLPC). Heck, people in some parts of the world could probably make a living with a XO laptop just by solving captchas. Then there is writing, video and audio creation, etc.
The point of the OLPC project is not to just supply what is most needed today, but rather to augment the charity food, water, shelter, and medical care with the tools of education (for any subject) and with the cheapest possible way for them to create a sustainable industry that will allow their society to stop relying on charity and start building again.
P.S. did you know Remote Area Medical, a charity that provides medical care primarily to Africa and east Asia has recently had to start working in the United States because so many Americans cannot get or afford basic medical care? Maybe the US should stop teaching computer science and focus on teaching medicine to more people?
Re: (Score:2)
Could you link to a source for that?
Sure.
Here's a Google Scholar link to one book on the subject:Smaller, C. 2005. Planting the Rights Seed: A Human Rights Perspective on Agricultural Trade and the WTO. Backgrounder No. 1, THREAD Series, IATP: Minneapolis , MN . [jhu.edu]
See almost anything by Devinder Sharma, but particularly "Africa's Tragedy; Famine as Commerce."
...or, just do a Google search for "africa agriculture dumping."
I believe that bad local politics (to say nothing of war) is a large reason for African poverty. Despotism in Zimbabwe, genocide in Sudan, war in Kenya...
There are a great many contributing factors. If local governments did not exorbitantly tax the people and especiall
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed.
Why not teach the students who already have some infrastructure, how to develop more. It would perhaps be possible to have some sort of low-cost, sturdy computing device, introduced into the educational system, to assist in this effort.
Re: (Score:2)
I've contributed time and money to microloans (set up small businesses), AIDS prevention and care, clean water initiatives (dig wells, set up distribution systems, monitor contaminant levels), Doctors Without Borders, malaria extermination, blindness prevention (there are some common ways to become blind in underdeveloped countries).
They need all of the above, and a way for the able to advance, just as a blind man needs to learn Braille...
Re: (Score:2)
Heh. I was just reading the other day that preventable kinds of blindness cause nearly four times the rate of blindness or serious reduction of vision in the USA as in Canada. At least when it comes to providing preventative medicine, the USA counts as one of those underdeveloped countries.
comming up next on slashdot.. (Score:2, Insightful)
OLPC - kids education
Classmate - older kids education
Eee - web browsing and IM
Re: (Score:2)
RM, who have had a pretty strong hold on the UK education market since the demise of Acorn, are pushing Eee. [rm.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a simple education toy that only looks like a laptop. Its more of a specialized educational gadget like a speak and spell than a Dell. Its keyboard is tiny and only for little kid fingers. Its slow and has a very simplified interface. It cant do WPA and has no ethernet port. Its screen is like a very cheap version of e-ink.
I dont see
Re: (Score:2)
OLPC: education project for the third world
Classmate: attempt to continue and strengthen colonialism
eee: small business laptop for the first world
I own two of these... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps they did. Linux geeks are not their target audience. Photoshopped blondes on beaches are.
With an XO and having played with a ClassMate... (Score:5, Informative)
In return, it is not as rugged (cooling fan and open interior, LiIon batteries, electrolytics, conventional hinge, clunky insecure closure, thick), nor as cheap, nor as useful (sunlight readable display), nor as appropriate for the 3rd world (a >50W power supply!?!).
Also, Windows doesn't understand how to use the Classmate's screen, either having it scroll up and down or squashing the display to fit.
I'd want Windows on the XO, with Windows understanding the screen resolution. THAT would be a nice combination, as Sugar is an abomination all to itself.
Re:With an XO and having played with a ClassMate.. (Score:2, Funny)
Posting from my EEE PC... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh wait, this is about educational use?? Uh... yeah I take my EEE PC to meetings and if I had this during college I'd have loved it for note taking. It's a sound educational tool that works great with my campus's wired and wireless access points.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Article is worthless (Score:5, Informative)
The eee certainly is stylish. I really like the hardware hacking you can do with it. I don't like the screen, though--not that it is too small physically, but that the resolution is so low, that text on the screen has to be larger in order to read it, which makes the screen effectively too small. Does that make sense?
My OLPC I really like, though again nothing is perfect. The hardware is top notch (though I have read of keyboard failures, that could happen to any manufacturer). The screen is great, I can read it in bright sunlight, I can flip it around and use it as an "ebook reader"--mostly to read pdf documentation for other software I use. I don't need to read that in direct sunlight, though.
One can't really complain about keyboards designed for children, but both the OLPC's keyboard and the eee (designed for adults) are about the same physical size, which means I can't touch type on either, but the fact that the keys are physically smaller on the OLPC, with a large gap between keys makes the occasional two-key press on the OLPC much less frequent than an eee.
One thing I really HATE, though, about the OLPC is that crappy sugarUI, and the whole activity vs. application paradigm. I also can't stand that file system hierarchies are ignored, and everything is collapsed to a single flat directory. How do I then save things to the correct subdirectory on my usb drive?
There are guides available to boot OLPC into ubuntu, for instance, but so far I've been too lazy to do so, especially since I have other options as far as hardware goes.
Classmate? meh, don't know, don't care. The few online reviews I have seen have not been flattering. The one plus, it doesn't have the sugarUI. The downside? Windows.
My wishlist for an UMPC would be: an OLPC, only slightly wider so it can acomodate a keyboard just large enough for me to touch-type, with ubuntu preloaded. If they make the next-gen eee an inch or so wider for the same reason, only with a decent screen (even if it is not as good as OLPC's) then I would settle for that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When I got to play with an OLPC, the thing that I couldnt' get past was the quality of the keyboard. It's nearly impossible to use for normal tasks; the keys are like soft telephone buttons and require a press rather than a tap. I would hate to use it for any kind of typing or development. Another poster mentioned that you can ssh into it to install software which really seems like the optimal choice. Of course, the SugarUI really isn't d
You have been heard... (Score:2)
Economically it's a 4-5 year old laptop (Score:4, Insightful)
And for what it's worth, GAMERZ D00DZ at
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No, it's not a 4-5 year old laptop (Score:2)
The processor is a 900Mhz underclocked Celeron M ULV 353 made in late 2004. So, thats 3+ year old tech...not to mention 512 of RAM and a solid state hard drive and a modern linux OS with great hardware support for wireless, etc.
The Asus that I am working on now is light and portable and small, something that did not exist 5 years ago. Even my fiancee can use it out of th
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, buy a 2nd hand laptop (Score:2)
So why not get a 4 year old laptop? I doubt my T40 Thinkpad is worth more than $350.
For non-geek regular mortals that would be a great idea, speaking as an xo owner just about the xo. I love my xo, but so much of that is pure geek appeal. I have no problem zipping around on the command line getting it to do what I want, rather than what it's designer's intended, which is for it to be a classroom appliance used by meshed up flocks of kids. Given what an xo costs on ebay, which seems to be about what G1G1 participants paid, and given that most adult geeks are going to want to buy an SD c
Re: (Score:2)
Is it a better system than an eee? Yes for some tasks but not for other.
I have a Thinkpad and I love it. The screen is great but it weighs too much for me to carry with me every where. The EEE is so small and light that I could see taking it with me everywhere. My wife would love one to put in her purse as well.
It all comes down to portability.
Re: (Score:2)
Investing $300 for such a device, rather than a new machine with a warranty, is begging to waste a lot of mone
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
XO Won That Hands Down (Score:2)
I love my EeePC (Score:2)
I have not seen the OLPC, but I love my EeePC.
It starts up and shuts down incredibly quickly. Everything "just works". I can run all my important tools like OpenSSH, OpenVPN, privoxy, etc. without any hassles. And Xandros did a pretty good job with the interface (though I tend to live in a terminal most of the time anyway.)
And 920g is so light I take it with me everywhere; I sometimes forget it's in my briefcase.
I've used the EeePC & OLPC (Score:5, Interesting)
Elonex One (Score:2)
I, for one, *LIKE* the Sugar UI (Score:5, Insightful)
I have watched several children play around with my XO, and not once has any of them ever asked me how to start or stop an activity using the Sugar UI. Truly, it is a brilliantly simple interface.
Frankly, the Journal is one of the very best parts of the whole thing. The XO remembers everything you do, automatically. You don't have to hit "save" when you've finished writing something, or deal with "files" and "folders" -- kids have no concept of such abstractions. You just use the durn thing, and it records everything for you, silently and efficiently. When you want to go back to what you were doing, you go to your Journal, and bingo, there it is. One click, and you're back in the saddle.
The key point here is to remember that Sugar is for kids. If you want an adult interface, you can install XFCE or your adult-sized distro of choice. Since it's just a standard Linux box, it's really easy to explore.
Re: (Score:2)
"It's an education project, not a laptop project."
I hear that a lot, but for most part it really is a laptop project, a laptop to be used in education, sure, but the hardware and software is pretty much what OLPC is.
Truly, it is a brilliantly simple interface.
I wouldn't call it brilliant, at least not right now, it is certainly not bad and having all applications run automatically in fullscreen is a big plus on a small screen, but it still has a long way to go.
Frankly, the Journal is one of the very best parts of the whole thing.
In a few month/years, maybe. At the moment the Journal feels still very unfinished and broken. Hardly any Activities provides proper thumb
Appearance (Score:2)
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Eee PC's 9 inch version.
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Informative)
The OLPC's resolution is given in what would be termed "subpixels" on a traditional display. So in one sense, an 800x600 RGB-stripe LCD of the same size would actually have a higher resolution: 1.44 million fixed-chroma/variable-intensity picture elements, vs. 1.08 million for the OLPC screen.
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
no other LCD display can use it's full set of subpixels in B&W mode for things like text rendering, like the OLPC can
True if you limit it to B&W, but not true of subpixel rendering in general. Subpixel rendering in color, for text especially, has been since 1988, when IBM invented it, and in common use since Windows XP (Cleartype). The unique innovation of the OLCP is not subpixel rendering, but the fact that the pixels lose their color in direct light, so it makes sense to create a B&W display mode in which subpixels can be addressed individually. It's a great idea that I hope we see in other devices.
OPLC isn't chroma fixed. (Score:3, Informative)
OLPC's screen isn't chroma fixed.
The other screens give you either 800x600 color pixels or 2400x600 subpixel with ugly color smearing on the antialasied edge (I just can't stand subpixel rendering. I find the color effects ugly) and non-square pixels (of course, each subpixels is a vertical rectangle wide 1/3 of its height).
OLPC's screen is either approx. 600x450 color pixels (in transflective mode).
Or 1200x9
Re: (Score:2)
A pixel on the OLPC screen can be (at most) a shade of red, OR a shade of green, OR a shade of blue. (This is in transflective mode -- chroma isn't discernible in reflective-only mode.)
Howeer, given how dense the pixels are, any triad of adjacent R, G, and B pixels can be perceived as one larger full-color pixel. If those three "sub"pixels are aligned horizontally, you get an effective resolution of 400x900; aligned vertically, you have 1200x300. Have every 3x2 block of "
Re: (Score:2)
Well, okay. But not screens.
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Interesting)
Add to that approximately three times the resolution (1200x900 vs 800x480) and it becomes pretty obvious that the OLPC has a much less cramped screen.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bias? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not so trivial.
Re:Bias? (Score:4, Informative)
I've tried Sugar (on a PC, LiveCD), and it's designed for small display. The icons are big, spaced wide apart, there are no very small elements of the UI at all, the windowless interface always gives whole screen real estate to the currently running application, you never find yourself struggling to decipher some tiny text or click some small piece of UI. It manages the available space well and provides a very good middle ground between number of items visible on the screen at any time and depth of user interface trees.
OTOH WinXP is barely capable of running at 800x600 and not one dialog window will simply not fit on the screen. Switch your XP desktop to 800x600 and try playing with it for a few hours, I assure you you'll feel the screen is cramped and the interface clunky and uncomfortable. Lots of scrolling, lots of opening additional submenus, moving windows, blindly pressing enter in hope it accepts the "OK" of a dialog that didn't fit on the screen and isn't resizable - I did use XP in 800x600 for a while and it does feel cramped.
Re: (Score:2)
Classmate/Eee Resolution: 800x480
Yes, four-freaking-eighty. Did you even look at all the pictures and read the related text? The third to the last at even a casual glance makes it painfully obvious how cramped looking the other two are in comparison to the XO, whether the specs make it seem that way or not. Doesn't seem even remotely biased to me; more like spot on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:eee (Score:4, Informative)
The 7 inch screens are a commodity (think portable DVD player) and as such are cheapish to produce. A 9 inch screen (the next logical step up in my mind), are more expensive now, likely because their demand is lower. I'm sure they could offer a larger screen, but at a much much higher cost, one that wouldn't compete well with the $500 low-end notebooks.
Re:eee (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eee (Score:4, Informative)
9 inch screen and more RAM and storage for 100 Euros more ($150 US).
399 Euro's equates to $600 at today's rates. Like I said, you can get a low-end full-size notebook (with the Vista tax even) for that price or less. The only thing you lose with the full size, well, is the compact and easy to carry size. Battery life might be better with the Eee, though that is hard to compare without specifics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:eee (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I have utmost respect for the OLPC and it's superior screen design when it comes to power consumption and daylight readability. If you haven't heard Mary Lou Jepsen speak on the subject, here is presentation she gave the other day.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/20/mary-lou-jepsen-at-greener-gadgets/ [inhabitat.com]
FWIW, I was contrasting the battery life of the Eee PC against it's current version and other readily available low-cost notebooks, not the XO or Classmate (which likely is comparable to the E
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The screen won't magically become bigger if you remove the speakers. It would require selecting a larger LCD, and that means it would cost more. At the very least, it would cost more to add a larger screen than you would save by removing the speakers. You would then have to issue headphones with each OLPC, and probably have to replace them as they are lost/damaged/stolen.
The target audience isn't the average
Re: (Score:2)
If it weren't for those, the screen could be an inch bigger.
/. geek.
The screen won't magically become bigger if you remove the speakers. It would require selecting a larger LCD, and that means it would cost more. At the very least, it would cost more to add a larger screen than you would save by removing the speakers. You would then have to issue headphones with each OLPC, and probably have to replace them as they are lost/damaged/stolen.
The target audience isn't the average
He's actually talking about the Eeepc, not the OLPC. Yes, it would cost more for the bigger screen, but no, Asus would not have to provide headphones, and certainly wouldn't have to replace them after they're lost/damaged/stolen.
Re: (Score:2)
I can surf the web, do email, work with digital pictures, chat, IM, play videos, and use Quicken on-line just fine under Linux.
If you have some software that you must use that only works in Windows well then yes you may need Windows but that has nothing to do with the quality of the OS.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)