Amazon to Sell OLPC XO Laptops With the Get One, Give One Arrangement

by Kristin Shoemaker - Nov. 12, 2008Comments (3)

PCWorld reports that the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Group has confirmed that Amazon will have XO laptops for sale on Monday, November 17th. The XO laptops at Amazon are sold in the same manner as they were initially at the OLPC site, with a $400 donation securing a laptop for the customer, and a laptop for a child in a developing country. This donation (or at least the portion used to purchase the laptop for the child) is tax deductible.

OLPC's vice president of software engineering, Jim Gettys, said that the XO laptops sold through Amazon will be Linux based (though some countries are opting for Windows versions), and that there is some talk of selling the XO through Amazon in other countries.

Depending on who is asked (on any given day), the OLPC can be called a great success, or a disappointing failure. Labeling the project either way is oversimplifying the issue. Is the OLPC the dominant machine in the market it targeted? Not exactly, but roughly two years later, it is still here (despite management upheavals). Nor is it an open source versus proprietary issue, at least, not purely. Many complaints that I've heard from those with the XO had less to do with the software and more to do with hardware components that were intermittently uncooperative. And love it or hate it, the OLPC opened the flood gates of low cost, lower (but adequately) powered computers, many of which run Linux as the pre-installed operating system. Is it what the project planned, or what the world expected? Probably not. There were losses, but it is nowhere near all bad.

The OLPC project is working on an updated XO (codenamed the extremely memorable XO-1 Gen 1.5) that could include a faster processor, better wireless hardware, increased storage capacity and rubber bumpers for added screen protection. It is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2009. My hope is that this doesn't cause anyone who might be willing to participate in the "Give One, Get One" program to wait for that release. Even if the release happens as scheduled, there is a need for these machines now, and even with the issues they have, they are still very functional.

The OLPC has also announced it's aiming for a 2010 release of the XO-2 laptop, which will integrate touch screen displays.

The XO's operating system is based on Fedora Core 6, and runs the Sugar Desktop Environment (which can be taken for a test drive on a few live "desktop" distributions.)


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3 Comments
 

Sam, how successful is the adoption of the OLPC? Not sure why or what selling it via Amazon is going to bring. What is the reasoning behind this thinking?


0 Votes

Hi Joe,


(Not Sam -- Kristin -- the early morning east coast contingency here at OStatic...)


In terms of hard numbers, I haven't any at present as to the worldwide adoption of the OLPC, nor am I sure how it met the project's initial projections for units shipped. I know that the management shakeups, the wavering on Windows vs. Linux on the machines, the fact it didn't meet the $100 laptop price point it was initially aiming for, and the roll out of the directly competing Intel Classmates and then the stream of netbooks from other manufacturers stole some thunder from the original concept. It may even be meeting the distribution goals it was hoping for, but there have been hiccups along the way.


Again, no reasoning was officially given for the sales through Amazon, but I would guess that this makes the project that much more visible to a consumer base that might not consider it much. Perhaps someone interested in buying a netbook for a child or grandchild (especially younger kids) on Amazon will bypass the ASUS/Aspire/MSI deals and go this route for the "feel good" factor. The give-one-get-one package isn't much more than one of the 700 series Eees, is geared towards kids who may not need even all the smaller, cheaper "commercial" netbooks offer, and has a generous feel around the holidays.


The OLPC site might just be "out of mind" for many, a push on Amazon will at least give it a push into their field of vision again (or perhaps for the first time). That, and at least when I was checking, it didn't seem the OLPC site was offering the "Give One Get One" deal there again this year (it did this time last year) -- so it may be an exclusive to Amazon thing, to focus as much on awareness and sales as donations.


--Kristin (shoe)


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I believe the reason why they're using Amazon is because of the enormous difficulties that they had with Give 1 Get 1 last time they ran it, especially with distribution. By using Amazon, they can take advantage of that company's massive experience with distribution while concentrating on making a super-cheap children's laptop.


As for why they're doing it in the first place, well there was a lot of excitement about the project leading people in developed countries to want a machine too. Management claimed that there were no resources to provide machines to people other than their target market (children in developing countries), and that's when members of the general public came up with the idea of getting a machine in return for donating a machine. The idea gained popularity, so management ran with it.


This is the second attempt at it after the first one was plagued with problems.


So that's why. :-)


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