Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android (8GB) $249 Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet (250GB) (the one for using the new Dev firmware) $199 Nokia N900 $649 - Has 2x smaller screen than Archos, much less storage, no HD 720p video decoding, no video recording

The Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet for one has a 3-4 times faster ARM Cortex A8 processor, basically like the processor in the Nokia N900 which costs 700 dollars and has a tiny screen. Archos has always been able to playback all the video codecs at least up to DVD resolution. The Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet now ships with 250GB hard drive for $199 or the 7" version for $209, that's basically the price of a 8GB ipod touch. Archos records TV using DVR connectors for input and output of composite, s-video, component and even with a HDMI output in 720p. Archos has USB 2.0 host for keyboards, mice and external hard drives.

Comon, it makes sense for them to void the warranty and disable DRM when officially allowing jailbreak. Third party hackers with bad code could make software that actually could brick or otherwise permanently harm the hardware. Archos should not be responsible for more than how consumers use their official firmware.

With time, the open development could though provide very stable ways to run Android, Maemo Mer, Ubuntu and more. At some point it would be considered safe to install those third party installs if distributed in a way people can trust and that many people are using it without reported problems.

Demanding that Archos not void the warranty on installing this, would be like demanding that Nintendo not void the warranty when people install a modchip on their Wii, or that Apple not void the warranty when hackers brick the iphone through some bad code in jailbreak mode.

Embedded platforms are fragile, for example software should not demand from the ARM processor to constantly burst at full 800mhz mode, this would heat it up too much and could harm the hardware. The 800mhz of the processor is only supposed to be used in burst mode when launching something heavy but it should not be constantly used to convert files or something else like that for a long time. Archos carefully uses the DSP accelerator when encoding videos, but third party developers might not be careful enough about that. Also, many consumers bought this Tablet over a year ago, or may buy it used on Ebay or something. At that point the warranty doesn't really matter anyway.

The fact that Intel does not WANT to lower prices does not mean that they COULD NOT do it. If it weren't for Intel and Microsoft's monopoly on the PC/Laptop market, we would have had $50 Laptops that run 20 hours on a battery by now, with instant on and free wireless broadband worldwide.

ARM Cortex A8 at 600Mhz performs better than Intel Atom at 800Mhz for loading Javascripts on HTML websites. Intel Atom 800mhz consumes more than 1W ARM Cortex A8 600mhz consumes less than 350mW

Most other components of a computer follow Moores law as well, some other components evolve even faster than Moores law like certain storage technologies.

If you can double the amount of transistors per chip every 18 months, then you can also halve the size of the same amount of transistors. Thus you CAN halve the price every 18 months. The reason Intel isn't halving the price of their processors every 18 months is not because they cannot, it's because they don't want to. Doing whatever it takes to keep the prices high is the speciality of Intel. Old slower processors are being DISONTINUED by Intel before they are able to be manufactured for cheaper. Just look at the average cost of processors sold by Intel. They kept the average sold processor costs steady between 2000 and 2007, and since the netbooks of 2007, the average price per processor sold by Intel has nearly halved.

The hardware may have problems, but you can't expect it to work better, given AMD did not support the project well enough to keep Geode up to date with the latest cost efficient components. And given OLPC only could afford the amount of engineers working full time that they could afford.

I absolutely don't see where Nicholas Negroponte should have been complaining about the Linux core developed by Ivan Kristic and the other engineers.

Although I am NOT an engineer and I do not know the details of what the actual work has been to make XO-1, I think Ivan Kristic is suffering from some type of frustration having done IMMENSE work, being the software genius that he is, but simply not having had the ressources required to realize all the visions perfectly thus far. And somehow feeling perhaps that his brilliant Bitfrost security mechanisms don't work yet as are intended.

That might lead to the choice Ivan Kristic then made to work for a much larger company Apple. Apple definitely has the ressources in those $20 Billion they have in the bank, to give Ivan whatever he needs to make his visions work.

The difference between having 12 engineers working with or for you (if Ivan was or wanted to be the CTO), and potentially 200 at Apple, means all the difference for him if he has to hack at code all by himself at OLPC with insanely tight deadlines that are always pushed back or to work more comfortably at Apple, get much more sleep, be much better paid.

Anyways, I'd much prefer if they'd all just agree that the evil is not within OLPC but that it has always been that the rest of the world does not let the OLPC vision become reality just that easily. And that it will take more punches to the industry to make it work for the Children and not only for the banks and shareholders.

OLPC has NEVER added things to please Microsoft.

Nicholas Negroponte has always argued that OLPC would only work towards Open Firmware supporting Windows on the laptops. Because he ALWAYS talked about Dual-boot support if ANY Windows Support at all!!!

Windows-only machines would never had been supported by OLPC funds.

Some Governments demand Windows support on the machines before they invest millions of dollars into such a project. That is why OLPC has worked on the open source Open Firmware ONLY, NOT ON THE HARDWARE, to support an eventual Windows port dual-bootable from a USB stick or from an SDHC card.

I hate Microsoft just as anyone else on Slashdot. Yet I also really hate when Linux fans act like complete idiots and bash on the worlds single BEST Linux hardware project EVER. Just because their totally open hardware somehow supports a Windows port also which Microsoft invested a lot of engineers for more than a year to have it working.

As much as I hate Microsoft, I would LOVE IT if Bill Gates announced tomorrow that he will finance $1 Billion to ship 5 million XO-1.5 in Africa running Windows (if he insists) but totally Linux dual-boot compatible as well, since THAT IS HOW OLPC MAKES THEM (providing each class with Linux USB sticks to either install a Linux dual-boot or to replace Windows eventually is easy).

Nah, XO1 is sluggish with Linux as well. OLPC did not change any hardware to accomodate Microsoft. The main problem with the XO is that AMD did not help much improving the Geode processor to fit with more cost effective RAM and Flash memory components.

But in 2007, OLPC did not really have a choice. Intel was crapping on the whole project with all its monopolistic corporate clout, and ARM processors did perhaps not seem ready enough for it.

I could perhaps argue, and I think I did ask the question often, why OLPC wasn't directly choosing the ARM processor back then in 2006-2007 for XO-1, I would have argued even an ARM11 processor would have been good enough.

Though, if you had to choose X86, I don't think OLPC did any mistakes in terms of hardware choices. Intel are absolutely impossible to work with and would have never wanted the netbook market to grow as fast as it is. Intel's profits are down 95% in 2008 compared to 2007 because of the netbooks cannibalizing the sales of more expensive processors in more expensive laptops.

"bending the specs to fit Windows"

That is BS. The specs were updated from 128MB RAM to 256MB RAM, not for Windows only, but for Linux as well. Same thing for the 1GB storage instead of 512MB.

With XO-1.5 they are improving the processor significantly upwards 1Ghz, with 4GB storage and much better DDR2 RAM memory. All this without increasing the cost, because VIA simply supports their new processor better and AMD has stopped developping for Geode years ago and don't support those latest cheaper and better components.

Last, your complaint about commercialization of OLPC to rich people like you. OLPC cannot do that cause they are a non profit. If you have them products on your market, you have them having to give 25% to resellers, paying for transportation, taxes, and none of the components would have been provided in the same way. And volunteers would not have contributed to the project in the same way.

AMD could have found some OEM and some brand to sell commercial versions of it if they wanted. But they did not want to. The commercial versions of OLPC are the Intel based netbooks. Those Intel based netbooks WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED if it weren't for OLPC forcing Intel into that market.

Being a non-profit, OLPC's goals are not only to build and sell laptops themselves, but most importantly to influence THE WHOLE MARKET. Which OLPC so far has done amazingly well and will continue to do with VIA based XO-1.5 and especially with ARM based XO-2 coming soon with Chrome OS probably.

Basically you read Ivan Kristic's post, he starts off saying he's always been against the Sugar UI.

Where in Nicholas Negroponte's interview does it say he thinks that the core Linux hardware/software development was the mistake?

Where in Nicholas Negroponte's interviews does he say he thinks Windows support on the XO is better than optimized Linux?

Talking about working for the evil empire, I'd say Ivan Kristic working for Apple should not have too much to brag about.

He's a genius for sure, and the work OLPC engineers have done for XO-1 was simply amazing considering the very small amount of engineers employed by OLPC, but I simply don't get why Ivan doesn't simply recognize that an open platform like XO simply cannot and should not try to block Microsoft from doing whatever they want if they want to port Windows XP for the unit as well.

Simply put, how can Ivan be working like this on an OPEN X86 based project and then demand that Microsoft not be allowed to port their Windows OS to it?