guys have you read their site?

it's handcrank or power from a wall socket. and the price increase is just for the general public to help raise funds to give these laptops to poor countries for cost, they have a full writeup about it in the last maximum pc. They are running redhat linux not windows, lol I like how they call redhat linux "homegrown"!

edit: I'm not sure what tgdaily is but they are definently not telling the whole story. I've been following this for about 5 years now and for one reporter to tear on them show his ignorance of it's history.

http://www.laptop.org - read there for yourself.

 

If you can't get electricity.. wtf is wireless going to do for you? I doubt your going to find a signal out in some villiage the middle of the Savana.

 

^^ make an adhoc network, share books, etc.

 

Wouldnt that cost to much money though, especially since africa is such a vast area to cover, And who would pay for all that? I really like the hand cranking idea..

 

the olpc runs on a new interface called sugar its an interface designed by developers for users who have never used or maybe even seen a computer before. the interface itself is probably too basic for people like us who already use computers, but ideally the machine really isn't meant for us.

As for the complaints about it being a waste that these machines will have wireless when they don't even have power at some places, think for a second before you b****. I've been to Africa and its amazing there. I completely support these for this reason. There are town with schools that have modern conveniences like electricity and internet connectivity. Unfortunately, kids who go to these schools may not have electricity in their homes. So, imagine getting homework that you have to do on your laptop... without that handcrank, it would really limit the use of the machine. The point is not to make this machine and make everyone connected to the internet as we know it. Thats too much to do instantly. The point is to help a new generation get up to speed with the rest of the world around them. Maybe by the time the kids that get these turn to adults, they'll be able to move anywhere in the world and accomplish any job that they are fit to do. Thats an emigration that I completely support.

The reason these are going to be available to us is to help get more machines to the parts of the world that actually need them. I'll probably get one for my little sister, she's 8 and would probably like it. The machine will run other operating systems. I might load Ubuntu on it for her, she's used OS X for years now. I'd like to get her away from windows as much as possible. As for me, this isn't something I could benefit from, it doesn't have the processing power I need.

 

if its their own country doing it for them fine, but if my tax dollars are going to it then imma go ape shit

 

its not government funded. Its open source. Developers, most located in MIT are working on this. Its being developed under the GPL and the OS is completely open source its red hat running simple gui for n00bs. If you don't understand what that means, then you should do some research. These people are not out to make money. if they were, making a laptop with a hand crank and 400mhz amd processor is not the way to go.

 

^^ thanks!!! smile.gif Someone else is listening!!!!

I love linux but I can't go all out anti windows. I have to use it daily with customer's computers and I have to stay up on it. I'm using vista and none of my customers have it yet. But if I don't in 6 months when they start moving towards it I'll be screwed.

On the other hand 1/2 of the computers I own run linux. None of those are workstations/desktops however.

For this application linux is the way to go. I was reading that microsoft was offering windows and office for $3 now so who knows, it can officially run both now.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Spiffywerks @ Apr 28 2007, 11:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>If you can't get electricity.. wtf is wireless going to do for you? I doubt your going to find a signal out in some villiage the middle of the Savana.</div>
linksys wireless handcrank router.