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|
 An XO-1 prototype | |
| Manufacturer | Quanta Computer |
|---|---|
| Type | Subnotebook[1] |
| Release date | November 2007 |
| Media | 1GBflash memory |
| Operating system | Fedora-based (Linux) withSugarGUI |
| CPU | AMD Geode LX700@0.8 W + 5536 |
| Memory | 256MBDRAM |
| Display | dual-mode (backlit color, direct-sunlightgrayscale) 19.1 cm (7.5 in) diagonalTFT LCD 1200×900 |
| Input | Keyboard,touchpad,microphone,camera |
| Camera | built-in video camera (640×480; 30 FPS) |
| Connectivity | 802.11b/g/s wireless LAN, 3USB 2.0 ports,MMC–SD card slot |
| Power | NiMH orLiFePO4 removable battery pack |
| Dimensions | 242 mm × 228 mm × 32 mm (9.5 in × 9.0 in × 1.3 in) |
| Weight | LiFePO4 battery: 1.45 kg (3.2 lb); NiMH battery: 1.58 kg (3.5 lb) |
| Website | laptop |
TheOLPC XO (formerly known as$100 Laptop,[2]Children's Machine,[3]2B1[4]) is a low costlaptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world,[5] to provide them withaccess to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves" (constructionist learning).[6] The XO was developed byNicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT's Media Lab, and designed byYves Behar'sFuseproject company.[7] The laptop is manufactured byQuanta Computer and developed byOne Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit501(c)(3) organization.
Thesubnotebooks were designed for sale to government-education systems which then would give each primary school child their own laptop. Pricing was set to start at US$188 in 2006, with a stated goal to reach the $100 mark in 2008 and the 50-dollar mark by 2010.[8] When offered for sale in the Give One Get One campaigns of Q4 2006 and Q4 2007, the laptop was sold at $199.[9]
Therugged,low-power computers useflash memory instead of ahard disk drive (HDD), and come with a pre-installed operating system derived fromFedora Linux, with theSugargraphical user interface (GUI).[10]Mobile ad hoc networking via802.11sWi-Fimesh networking, to allow many machines to share Internet access as long as at least one of them could connect to an access point, was initially announced, but quickly abandoned after proving unreliable.[11]
The latest version of the OLPC XO is the XO-4 Touch,[12] which was introduced in 2012.
The first early prototype was unveiled by the project's founderNicholas Negroponte and then-United Nations Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan on November 16, 2005, at theWorld Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) inTunis, Tunisia.[13] The device shown was a rough prototype using a standard development board. Negroponte estimated that the screen alone required three more months of development.[citation needed] The first working prototype was demonstrated at the project's Country Task Force Meeting on May 23, 2006.[citation needed]
Steve Jobs had offeredMac OS X free of charge for use in the laptop, but according toSeymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders, the designers wanted an operating system that can be tinkered with: "We declined because it's not open source."[14] Therefore, Linux was chosen.
In 2006,Microsoft had suddenly developed an interest in the XO project and wanted the formerly open source effort to run Windows. Negroponte agreed to provide engineer assistance to Microsoft to facilitate their efforts. During this time, the project mission statement changed to remove mentions of "open source". A number of developers, such asIvan Krstić andWalter Bender, resigned because of these changes in strategy.[15][16][17] The version of Windows that ran on the XO wasWindows XP.[18]
Approximately 400 developer boards (Alpha-1) were distributed in mid-2006; 875 working prototypes (Beta 1) were delivered in late 2006; 2400 Beta-2 machines were distributed at the end of February 2007;[19] full-scale production started November 6, 2007.[20]Quanta Computer, the project's contract manufacturer, said in February 2007 that it had confirmed orders for one million units.Quanta indicated that it could ship five million to ten million units that year because seven nations had committed to buy the XO-1 for their schoolchildren: Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand, and Uruguay.[21] Quanta plans to offer machines very similar to the XO-1 on the open market.[22]
TheOne Laptop Per Child project originally stated that a consumer version of the XO laptop was not planned.[23] In 2007, the project established a website,laptopgiving.org, for outright donations and for a "Give 1 Get 1" offer valid (but only to the United States, its territories, and Canadian addresses) from November 12, 2007 until December 31, 2007.[24] For each computer purchased at a cost of $399, an XO is also sent to a child in a developing nation.[24] OLPC again restarted the G1G1 program throughAmazon.com in November 2008, but has since stopped as of December 2008 or 2009.[25]
On May 20, 2008, OLPC announced the next generation of XO,OLPC XO-2[26] which was thereafter cancelled in favor of thetablet-like designedXO-3. In late 2008, theNew York City Department of Education began a project to purchase large numbers of XO computers for use by schoolchildren.[27]
The design received the Community category award of the 2007Index: Award.[28][29]
In 2008 the XO was awarded London's Design Museum "Design of the Year", plus two gold, one silver, and one bronze award at the Industrial Design Society of America's International Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs).[7]
The XO-1 is designed to be low-cost, small, durable, and efficient. It is shipped with a slimmed-down version ofFedora Linux and a customGUI namedSugar that is intended to help young children collaborate. The XO-1 includes a video camera, a microphone, long-range Wi-Fi, and a hybridstylus andtouchpad. Along with a standard plug-in power supply, human and solar power sources are available, allowing operation far from a commercial power grid.Mary Lou Jepsen has listed the design goals of the device as follows:[30]
In keeping with its goals of robustness and low power use, the design of the laptop intentionally omits all motor-driven moving parts; it has nohard disk drive, optical (compact disc (CD) or Digital Versatile DiscDVD) media,floppy disk drive, or fan (the device is passively cooled). NoSerial ATA interface is needed due to the lack of hard drive. Storage is via an internalSD card slot.[31] There is also noPC card slot, although Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports are included.
A built-in hand-crank generator was part of the notebook in the original design; however, it is now an optional clamp-on peripheral.[32]
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The first-generation OLPC laptops have a novel low-costliquid crystal display (LCD). It has a 1200 × 900 7.5 inch (19 cm) diagonaltransflectiveLCD (200dpi) that uses 0.1 to 1.0 W depending on mode. There are two modes: Reflective (backlight off) monochrome mode for low-power use in sunlight. This mode provides very sharp images for high-quality text andBacklit color mode, with an alternance of red, green and blue pixels.The XO 1.75 developmental version for XO-3 has an optional touch screen.
Theelectronic visual display is the costliest component in most laptops. In April 2005, Negroponte hiredMary Lou Jepsen, who was interviewing to join the Media Arts and Sciences faculty at theMIT Media Lab in September 2008,[33] as OLPCChief Technology Officer. Jepsen developed a new display for the first-generation OLPC laptop, inspired by the design of small LCDs used in portable DVD players, which she estimated would cost about $35. In the OLPC XO-1, the screen is estimated to be the second most costly component, after thecentral processing unit (CPU) andchipset.[34]
Jepsen has described the removal of the filters that color the RGBsubpixels as the critical design innovation in the newLCD. Instead of using subtractive color filters, the display uses a plasticdiffraction grating and lenses on the rear of the LCD to illuminate eachpixel.[dubious –discuss] This grating pattern is stamped using the same technology used to makeDVDs. The grating splits the light from the white backlight into a spectrum. The red, green, and blue components are diffracted into the correct positions to illuminate the corresponding pixel withR, G or B. This innovation results in a much brighter display for a given amount of backlight illumination: while the color filters in a regular display typically absorb 85% of the light that hits them, this display absorbs little of that light. Most LCD screens at the time usedcold cathodefluorescent lamp backlights which were fragile, difficult or impossible to repair, required a high voltage power supply, were relatively power-hungry, and accounted for 50% of the screens' cost (sometimes 60%). Thelight-emitting diode (LED) backlight in the XO-1 is easily replaceable, rugged, and low-cost.[35][36]
The remainder of the LCD uses extant display technology and can be made using extant manufacturing equipment. Even the masks can be made using combinations of extant materials and processes.
When lit primarily from the rear with the whiteLED backlight, the display shows a color image composed of both RGB and grayscale information.[37] When lit primarily from the front by ambient light, for example from the sun, the display shows amonochromatic (black and white) image composed of just the grayscale information.
"Mode" change occurs by varying the relative amounts backlight and ambient light. With more backlight, a higher chrominance is available and a color image display is seen. As ambient light levels, such as sunlight, exceed the backlight, a grayscale display is seen; this can be useful when reading e-books for an extended time in bright light such as sunlight. The backlight brightness can also be adjusted to vary the level of color seen in the display and to conserve battery power.
In color mode (when lit primarily from the rear), the display does not use the common RGBpixel geometry for liquid crystal computer displays, in which each pixel contains three tall thin rectangles of the primary colors. Instead, the XO-1 display provides one color for each pixel. The colors align along diagonals that run from upper-right to lower left (see diagram on the right). To reduce the color artifacts caused by this pixel geometry, the color component of the image is blurred by the display controller as the image is sent to the screen. Despite the color blurring, the display still has high resolution for its physical size; normal displays as of February 2007[update] put about 588(H) × 441(V) to 882(H) × 662(V) pixels in this amount of physical area[citation needed] and supportsubpixel rendering for slightly higher perceived resolution. A Philips Research study measured the XO-1 display's perceived color resolution as effectively 984(H) × 738(V).[38][39][40] A conventional liquid crystal display with the same number of green pixels (green carries most brightness or luminance information for human eyes) as the OLPC XO-1 would be 693 × 520.[citation needed] Unlike a standard RGB LCD, resolution of the XO-1 display varies with angle. Resolution is greatest from upper-right to lower left, and lowest from upper-left to lower-right. Images which approach or exceed this resolution will lose detail and gain color artifacts. The display gains resolution when in bright light; this comes at the expense of color (as the backlight is overpowered) and color resolution can never reach the full 200 dpi sharpness of grayscale mode because of the blur which is applied to images in color mode.
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The laptop design specification goals are about 2 W of power consumed during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops.[19] With build 656, power use is between 5 and 8 watts measured on G1G1 laptop. Future software builds are expected to meet the 2-watt target.
In e-book mode (XO 1.5), all hardware sub-systems except the monochrome dual-touch display are powered down. When the user moves to a different page, the other systems wake up, render the new page on the display, and then go back to sleep. Power use in this e-book mode is estimated to be 0.3 to 0.8 W. The XO 2.0 is planned to consume even less power than earlier versions, less than 1.0 W in full color mode.
Power options include batteries, solar power panels, and human-powered generators, which make the XOself-powered equipment. 10 batteries at once can be charged from the school building power in the XO multi-battery charger. The low power use, combined with these power options are useful in many countries that lack a power infrastructure.
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IEEE 802.11b support will be provided using a Wi-Fi "Extended Range" chip set. Jepsen has said the wireless chip set will be run at a low bit rate, 2 Mbit/s maximum rather than the usual higher speed 5.5 Mbit/s or 11 Mbit/s to minimize power use. The conventional IEEE 802.11b system only handles traffic within a local cloud of wireless devices in a manner similar to anEthernet network. Each node transmits and receives its own data, but it does not route packets between two nodes that cannot communicate directly. The OLPC laptop will useIEEE 802.11s to form thewireless mesh network.
Whenever the laptop is powered on it can participate in amobile ad hoc network (MANET) with each node operating in apeer-to-peer fashion with other laptops it can hear, forwarding packets across the cloud[when?]. If a computer in the cloud has access to theInternet—either directly or indirectly—then all computers in the cloud are able to share that access. The data rate across this network will not be high; however, similar networks, such as thestore and forward Motoman project[44] have supported email services to 1000 schoolchildren inCambodia, according to Negroponte. The data rate should be sufficient for asynchronous network applications (such as email) to communicate outside the cloud; interactive uses, such as web browsing, or high-bandwidth applications, such as video streaming should be possible inside the cloud. The IP assignment for the meshed network is intended to be automatically configured, so no server administrator or an administration of IP addresses is needed.
Building aMANET is still untested under the OLPC's current configuration and hardware environment. Although one goal of the laptop is that all of its software beopen source, the source code for thisrouting protocol is currently closed source. While there are open-source alternatives such asOLSR orB.A.T.M.A.N., none of these options is yet available running at the data-link layer (Layer 2) on the Wi-Fi subsystem's co-processor; this is critical to OLPC'spower efficiency scheme. WhetherMarvell Technology Group, the producer of the wireless chip set and owner of the current meshing protocol software, will make the firmware open source is still an unanswered question. As of 2011, it has not done so.
Yves Behar is the chief designer of the present XO shell. The shell of the laptop is resistant to dirt and moisture, and is constructed with 2 mm thick plastic (50% thicker than typical laptops). It contains a pivoting, reversible display, movable rubber Wi-Fi antennas, and a sealed rubber-membrane keyboard.
,
,
, and
).More than twenty different keyboards have been laid out, to suit local needs to match the standard keyboard for the country in which a laptop is intended. Around half of these have been manufactured for prototype machines.[45][46] There are parts of the world which do not have a standard keyboard representing their language. As Negroponte states this is "because there's no real commercial interest in making a keyboard".[47] One example of where the OLPC has bridged this gap is in creating anAmharic keyboard[48] forEthiopia. For several languages, the keyboard is the first ever created for that language.[11]
Negroponte has demanded that the keyboard not contain acaps lock key, which frees up keyboard space for new keys such as a future "view source" key.[49]
Beneath the keyboard was a large area that resembled a very widetouchpad. The capacitive portion of the mousepad was anAlps GlidePoint touchpad,[50][51] which was in the central third of the sensor and could be used with a finger. The full width was a resistive sensor which, though never supported by software, was intended to be used with a stylus. This unusual feature was eliminated in the CL1A hardware revision because it suffered from erratic pointer motion. Alps Electronics provided both the capacitive and resistive components of the mousepad.[50]
The first XO prototype, displayed in 2005, had a built-in hand-crank generator for charging the battery. The XO-1 beta, released in early 2007, used a separate hand-crank generator.[citation needed]
The XO-1 was released in late 2007.[52][53]
The XO 1.5 was released in early 2010.[55]
The XO 1.75 began development in 2010,[56][57] with full production starting in February 2012.[58]
The XO 2, previously scheduled for release in 2010, was canceled in favor of XO 3. With a price target$75, it had an elegant, lighter, folding dual touch-screen design. The hardware would have been open-source and sold by various manufacturers. A choice of operating system (Windows XP or Linux) was intended outside the United States. Its$150 price target in the United States includes two computers, one donated.[60]
TheOLPC XO-3 was scheduled for release in late 2012. It was canceled in favor of the XO-4. It featured one solid color multi-touch screen design, and a solar panel in the cover or carrying case.
The XO 4 is a refresh of the XO 1 to 1.75 with a later ARM CPU and an optional touch screen. This model will not be available for consumer sales. There is a mini HDMI port to allow connecting to a display.[12]
The XO Tablet was designed by third-partyVivitar, rather than OLPC, and based on the Android platform[61][62] whereas all previous XO models were based on Sugar running on top of Fedora. It is commercially available[63][64] and has been used in OLPC projects.[65]
Countries are expected to remove and add software to best adapt the laptop to the local laws and educational needs. As supplied by OLPC, all of thesoftware on the laptop will befree andopen source.[49] All core software is intended to be localized to the languages of the target countries.[66] The underlying software[67] includes:
The laptop uses theSugar graphical user interface, written inPython, on top of theX Window System and theMatchboxwindow manager.[69] This interface is not based on the typicaldesktop metaphor but presents an iconic view of programs and documents and a map-like view of nearby connected users. The current active program is displayed in full-screen mode.[19] Much of the core Sugar interface uses icons, bypassing localization issues. Sugar is also defined as having no folders present in the UI.
Jim Gettys, responsible for the laptops' system software, has called for a re-education of programmers, saying that many applications use too much memory or evenleak memory. "There seems to be a common fallacy among programmers that using memory is good: on current hardware it is often much faster to recompute values than to have to reference memory to get a precomputed value. A full cache miss can be hundreds of cycles, and hundreds of times the power use of an instruction that hits in the first level cache."[54]
On August 4, 2006, theWikimedia Foundation announced that static copies of selected Wikipedia articles would be included on the laptops.Jimmy Wales, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "OLPC's mission goes hand in hand with our goal of distributing encyclopedic knowledge, free of charge, to every person in the world. Not everybody in the world has access to a broadband connection."[71] Negroponte had earlier suggested he would like to seeWikipedia on the laptop. Wales feels that Wikipedia is one of the "killer apps" for this device.[72]
Don Hopkins announced that he is creating a free and open source port of the gameSimCity to the OLPC with the blessing ofWill Wright andElectronic Arts, and demonstrated SimCity running on the OLPC at theGame Developer's Conference in March 2007.[73] The free and open source SimCity plans were confirmed at the same conference by SJ Klein, director of content for the OLPC, who also asked game developers to create "frameworks and scripting environments—tools with which children themselves could create their own content."[74][75]
The laptop's security architecture, known asBitfrost, was publicly introduced in February 2007. No passwords will be required for ordinary use of the machine. Programs are assigned certain bundles of rights at install time which govern their access to resources; users can later add more rights. Optionally, the laptops can be configured to request leases from aOLPC XS central server and to stop working when the leases expire; this is designed as a theft-prevention mechanism.
The pre-8.20 software versions were criticized for bad wireless connectivity and other minor issues.[76]
The XO-1 is nicknamedceibalita in Uruguay after theCeibal project.[77]
The hand-crank system for powering the laptop was abandoned by designers shortly after it was announced, and the "mesh" internet-sharing approach performed poorly and was then dropped.[11]Bill Gates of Microsoft criticized the screen quality.[11]
Some critics of the program would have preferred less money being spent on technology and more money being spent on clean water and "real schools".[11] Some supporters worried about the lack of plans for teaching students. The program was based onconstructionism, which is the idea that, if they had the tools, the kids would largely figure out how to do things on their own.[11] Others wanted children to learn the Microsoft Windows operating system, rather than OLPC's lightweight Linux derivative, on the belief that the children would use Microsoft Windows in their careers.[11] Intel'sClassmate PC used Microsoft Windows and sold forUS$200 to 400.[11]
The project was known as "the$100 laptop", but it originally cost $130 for a bare-bones laptop, and then the price rose to $180 in the next revision.[11] The solid-state alternative to a hard drive was sturdy, which meant that the laptop could be dropped with a lower risk of breaking—although more laptops were broken than expected—but it was costly, so the machines had limited storage capacity.[11]
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