The £99 laptop: how can it be so cheap?
,----[ Quote ]
| A new laptop computer for just £99 sounds like the kind of offer found in a
| spam e-mail or on a dodgy auction website. But the British company Elonex is
| launching the country’s first sub £100 computer later this month and hopes to
| be making 200,000 of them by the summer. It will be aimed at schoolchildren
| and teenagers, and looks set to throw the market for budget laptops wide
| open.
|
| Called the One, it can be used as a traditional notebook computer or, with
| the screen detached from the keyboard, as a portable “tablet” – albeit
| without the planned touchscreen that Elonex had to abandon to hit its £99
| price tag. Wi-fi technology lets users access the internet or swap music (and
| homework) files between computers wirelessly.
|
| [...]
|
| The secret is simple: open-source software. The One runs on Linux, which is a
| rival to Windows but completely free to use. Open-source software can be
| freely swapped or modified by anyone who wants it. In the past such operating
| systems (there are several of them) have been outgunned by the more
| sophisticated Windows programs. However, an open-source operating system is
| ideal for low-cost devices as it performs well on less powerful, cheaper
| hardware.
`----
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article3374812.ece
Last week:
Sri Lanka to introduce one laptop per child
,----[ Quote ]
| Two-million primary school children are to be provided with US$ 100-worth
| laptops under a farsighted initiative.
|
| This is being launched by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a US based
| organisation in collaboration with the Education Department and several local
| and foreign financial, technological and academic institutions.
`----
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080210/FinancialTimes/ft310.html
Mini-laptop sweeps through schools
,----[ Quote ]
| RM, the company supplying the Minibook computer to schools, sold out its
| first order of 6,000 within weeks, and is now projecting school sales of
| 30,000 by the end of the year. They are attracting the attention of IT
| teachers, and with them a multimillion-pound market in school computing so
| far dominated by Microsoft, the Goliath to RM's David.
|
| [...]
|
| Last year the government spent £801m on IT equipment for schools. Microsoft
| has the lion's share of the market, but the Minibooks circumvent this iron
| grip by using Linux open source software instead of Microsoft Windows Vista.
`----
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2255522,00.html
Related:
How will Linux win the OS wars? From the bottom up!
,----[ Quote ]
| So therefore, best way to win the war of the operating systems is not to go
| after the high end market.
`----
http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=352
Low-cost laptops make PC makers mull margins
,----[ Quote ]
| “Computers have been an exception. If you look at consumer electronics, a DVD
| player was about $800 10 years ago – now they sell for $20,” she says. “The
| [computer] industry has been able to keep the price flat by focusing on
| gazillion-gigahertz machines running really bloated software and that’s
| worked for years since the IBM PC revolution.”
|
| [...]
|
| OLPC found a strong uptake for a “give one, get one” campaign it launched in
| North America in November. It discovered consumers were willing to pay $400
| for an XO – the price meant another XO would be given free to a
| developing-world child. It is now launching OLPC America to extend the cheap
| laptop concept for children in the US.
`----
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cfba14f4-cf64-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac.html
Linux Has Won, Windows is Gone
,----[ Quote ]
| Sorry Windows you have already lost this battle. There is no way to reverse
| this and no amount of incentives that Microsoft can offer to convince people
| and governments that they will be safe if they switch back to Windows. Lets
| be honest here for a moment. Would your trust America's nuclear technologies
| to be run on Windows? What happens when it bluescreens, yeah you get my point
| don't you?
`----
http://linuxhow2.com/News/Linux_Has_Won_Windows_is_Gone.html
|
|
