Maybe Intel’s miserable spat with the OLPC has had some good results, the world is now focussed on low-cost laptops.
Forget the $100 laptop envisaged in the XO laptop design of OLPC, the new goal is the $75 laptop, and it’s being pursued by no less a figure than the former CTO of the OLPC project.
Mary Lou Jepsen has set up a company called Pixel Qi after leaving OLPC last month.
“The XO laptop is perhaps the most innovative laptop made in the last several years. We feel this is just a first step in the transformation of personal computing.”, says a Pixel Qi company statement, “Pixel Qi is currently pursuing the $75 laptop, while also aiming to bring sunlight readable, low-cost and low-power screens into mainstream laptops, cellphones and digital cameras.”
Pixel Qi will give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.
“I believe that looking at computers in a new, holistic, systemic way, with a clean-sheet approach to computer design - rather than incrementally increasing the horsepower of the CPU - is critical to bringing computing and Internet access to more than the 1 billion affluent who now are its beneficiaries”, says Jepsen on the Pixel Qi site, “the key is a new generation of low-cost, low power, durable, networked computers, leveraging open-design principles.”
“A computer is not just its CPU”, says the Pixel Qi site, “ today, we can approach displays as like ASICs, and use this approach to lower the cost of this expensive, power-hungry component. Thus, for the XO, it was essential to simultaneously re-think the computer platform, and to re-think how the display was to be made - along the way becoming the first person to convince a large LCD manufacturer to make an externally-developed design.”
With such an iconoclastic attitude as that, why not use an ARM processor running Linux?
Because most of the internet plug-ins out there, even for Linux, are x86. Not much point surfing the web if you can't get at lots of the content.
There are already quite a few ARM-based smart phones and PDAs out there. If there were also a few billion ARM-based laptops, people might find it worth developing internet plug-ins for devices other than the x86!
Ah! think about a laptop with an ARM CPU. Imagine how long the battery would last on something that ran on a cellphone CPU. Days probably. My cellphone runs for a week without needing a re-charge.
If the laptop did had a solid state disk, and the low power screen, with an ARM CPU and a Linux OS tweaked to extend battery usage, think of walking around without a charger for days on end.
And low cost, why not? Why does every new technology have to cost an arm and a leg when it comes out?
I couldn't agree more
If they build it and sell it, I'll buy it!
The price premium for an iPad optimized app is still unknown, but I would not be surprised to see an average price of $4.99.