OLPC Discovers Economic Reality; Cuts Staff

Computers

from the but-the-dream-is-closer... dept

We’ve certainly been somewhat harsh on Nicholas Negroponte’s OLPC program in the past — not because we don’t like the idea of helping underprivileged kids building technology skills, but because of the way Negroponte has run the project from the beginning. He’s acted as if he were the only one who should be working towards that goal and any competition was seen as a betrayal. Also, he took a very top down Negroponte-knows-best approach to building the laptop, which has led to significant problems within the team and with the product not living up to expectations — showing once again that ideas are easy, it’s the execution that’s difficult, and if you limit the execution to just one company, you’re cutting off a lot of the opportunity.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that OLPC is now cutting its workforce in half, and slashing salaries for remaining employees. Negroponte blames the economy, but that seems like an especially weak excuse, given just how strongly small, inexpensive mini-laptops (netbooks) are selling these days. Clearly, there’s tremendous demand out there for super cheap, small laptops. The problem is that Negroponte decided from the beginning that his product was only for kids in developing countries, and left a massive market underserved (the rather weak give one, get one program was hardly serving the market).

But, again, the point is clear: the overall market is doing a rather amazing job serving the market. They’re providing all sorts of very cheap mini laptops at price points even below what the OLPC is going for. No, most netbooks don’t have some of the bells and whistles of the OLPC that help it survive a rough environment, but it seems rather likely that used netbooks and newer cheaper netbooks will find their way into developing countries soon enough as well — just as second hand mobile phones have made it. So, in the end, Negroponte’s original vision may get served, but it will get served by the market and competition, rather than his own grand master plan.

Filed Under: competition, execution, ideas, nicholas negroponte, olpc
Companies: olpc

The Difference Between Invention And Innovation In The Netbook Space

Computers

from the it's-all-about-the-tweaking dept

Business Week’s Steve Hamm has a short post talking about the “sudden” success of “netbooks,” those mini-laptops that are suddenly selling like crazy. As he notes, smaller laptops are not a new idea, and have been tried for many years in varying formats without much success. But, for some reason, after so many different experiments, it seems that the sweet spot in terms of size, usability and price have all been found.

This actually highlights something quite common in technology innovation: the difference between the idea, the invention and the actual innovation. Just the idea alone wasn’t enough to actually make the product valuable. Finding that real sweetspot is a challenge for just about any product, and it involves an awful lot of experimentation to make it work. I’ve been reading about the early days of a number of inventions lately, and you see this story over and over again, where the initial versions really have no market, and it’s a later, totally minor tweak that suddenly makes it valuable. And, of course, the best way to get that tweak to happen quickly (and thus expand a market, and improve the overall economy) is to let a lot of different players experiment to throw a lot of ideas at the market to see what actually does hit that sweet spot. Tragically, with a patent system that grants monopoly protection at the invention stage, this is often a lot more difficult, slowing down the attempts to actually hit that sweetspot.

Filed Under: innovation, invention, netbooks

$100 Laptop Still $400, But Now With More Advertising

Computers

from the market?-bah dept

Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative has received plenty of press over the years, though we’ve never quite fully understood it. While the idea of making cheap, durable laptops available to people worldwide has some value, the benefits haven’t been fully explained and Negroponte’s thoughts on how best to deliver them have been a bit perplexing. In particular, his apparent belief that competition in the space is a bad — when competition might actually help realize the goal of a $100 machine more quickly than if OLPC goes it alone. In an attempt to boost volume, OLPC is getting a bunch of media companies to donate airtime and and ad space for a marketing campaign for the machine, trying to drive donations or sales under its “Give One, Get One” program, where people can spend $400 for an XO of their own, while another one gets donated to the cause. The head of the agency which created the ads for the campaign says they’ll help build the economies of scale necessary to get the XO laptops down to the magical $100 price point.

Meanwhile, the prices of other netbooks, as these things do, continue to fall. While none are yet down to $100, it’s hard to imagine that it will be too much longer before somebody breaks the barrier. And it probably won’t be the OLPC group. With that in mind, Negroponte’s anti-competitive, go-it-alone stance continues to confuse. If the market and competition can drive prices down, that’s great for the OLPC mission, right? So why not abandon the single-product model (especially since hardware is basically a commodity, even with the XO’s features), and focus on getting as many devices as possible — even if they’re another brand — into schools worldwide? If the real OLPC innovation is the software, install it on the machines. It would certainly seem that the best course of action is to do whatever will drive the cost down the most quickly, and somehow using the growing consumer netbook market, rather than OLPC standing alone with its own machine, would do that. Negroponte seems hesitant to acknowledge that the bigger market can actually help OLPC’s mission, even when ignoring that fact hampers that mission.

Filed Under: $100, advertising, olpc

Bills Introduced To Protect Laptops At Border Searches

Computers

from the restoring-the-4th-amendment dept

As was widely expected following earlier statements from politicians such as Russ Feingold, legislation has now been introduced that would curb Homeland Security’s ability to randomly search laptops at the border, instead, requiring them to have a “reasonable suspicion” of illegal activity before they can search or copy a hard drive. This would be a huge step forward in terms of reasonable levels of privacy at the border. While defenders of the random search program claim that it’s necessary, they give little proof. You can tell because their arguments could equally be applied to searching a random person on the street as well, as they just give vague platitudes about protecting the country from harm. Yet our country has privacy rights and probable cause for a very good reason. It’s nice to actually see some politicians standing up to make sure that Homeland Security live up to those ideals.

Filed Under: border, customs, homeland security, laptops, russ feingold, searches

DHS: Laptop Border Searches Are Bad… Except When We Do It

Computers

from the that-may-change-soon dept

The Department of Homeland Security has been actively (though with really weak arguments) defending its policy of searching laptops at the border, even without probable cause. Yet, at the very same time that it was staunchly defending the policy and refusing to testify in front of Congress over it, it was also issuing a report warning international travelers not to take laptops, since foreign governments often search them. You see, when foreign governments do it, it’s evil espionage. But when we do it, it’s for our own security:

“Foreign governments routinely target the computers and other electronic devices and media carried by U.S. corporate and government personnel traveling abroad to gather economic, military, and political information.”

Either way, it looks like DHS’s own freedom to search laptops without probable cause may soon get curtailed. The Senate has been making noise for a while about introducing a bill to reign in the laptop searches, and Rep. Loretta Sanchez introduced some legislation in the House last week that would establish clear rules, compared to the anything goes policy currently in existence. Kind of sad that we need special legislation to make it clear that the 4th Amendment should apply at the border, but such is life these days.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, border, laptop searches, privacy, probable cause

HP And Walmart Get Rid Of Laptop Box; Buy The Computer And Get It In A Messenger Bag

Computers

from the about-time dept

Having bought my fair share of laptops over the years, I’ve noticed that the packaging has gotten smaller. I remember years ago buying a laptop and receiving a huge box with the actual laptop suspended in a styrofoam suspension system. More recently, I’ve seen laptops coming in much smaller boxes. However, Wal-Mart and HP have apparently decided to try ditching most of the packaging altogether, and letting you walk out with your new laptop in a messenger bag, rather than a box. Yes, there are still boxes from when the machines are shipped from HP to Wal-Mart, but the company can now fit 3 laptops to a box, significantly reducing packaging and making life easier on customers in the long run.

Filed Under: boxes, laptops, packaging
Companies: hp, wal-mart

Will Nicholas Negroponte Ever Understand That Competition Isn't About Killing OLPC?

Computers

from the get-over-it dept

We’ve never quite understood Nicholas Negroponte’s position when it comes to the $100 Laptop/OLPC/XO (whatever it’s called these days). While the idea behind creating a super cheap, super durable useful computer for children in developing nations is good, Negroponte has always approached the idea as one where only he should be allowed to see that vision through. When other companies decided it might be a good idea and wanted to target that market themselves, Negroponte flipped out and started attacking them for trying to undermine his project.

Sorry, Nicholas, but competition isn’t undermining.

In fact, competition is generally what drives all parties to be better at what they do, in order to fend off the competition. Yet, somehow, the UK’s Times Online has bought into Negroponte’s side of the story and written up an article bashing Microsoft and Intel for trying to “kill” the OLPC. The article is riddled with factual errors and opinion substituting as fact, but the worst is in the central point of the article. The author mistakes companies all aiming for the same market as a nefarious attempt to “kill off” Negroponte’s pet project — as if he has some universal right to the market that no one else can attempt to enter. It also brushes over some simple facts, like the one where many countries have looked at the OLPC and realized it doesn’t really serve their needs just yet. That, if anything, should be even more reason why competition is necessary. It helps create better products that actually serve the needs of people in those markets, rather than just what Negroponte decides they must want in his top-down manner.

Filed Under: competition, execution, ideas, nicholas negroponte, olpc
Companies: amd, intel, microsoft, olpc

Is Taking A Laptop On Vacation Stupid?

Computers

from the well,-that-depends... dept

More than five years ago, we first discussed whether or not it made sense to take a laptop with you on vacation. Many people do so, and say that it’s actually quite useful, because it allows them to stay caught up with work with just a little bit of effort. The end result is that when they get back to work, they’re not overwhelmed with everything they missed. Now, however, a psychologist in the UK insists that taking a laptop on vacation is “stupid” and can break up your family. Seems a bit extreme. Having done vacations both with and without my laptop, I’d say that it actually depends quite a bit on the person, the job and the vacation (well, and the other family members). Mike Elgan, over at Computerworld does an excellent job shredding the psychologist’s faulty logic:

Clearly he’s not talking about attention itself, but diverting attention using a computer. Cooper’s clear assumption is that work is “bad” and that leisure is “good,” that technology (a laptop) is “bad” and non-technology (a book) is “good.”

Cooper also makes a host of other assumptions. For starters, he assumes that you’re disconnected from your own family all year, and need to “commune again with your family, connect with your children.” So that’s his advice? Become alienated from your own family, then “commune” with them for only two weeks a year? Why does he assume alienation in the first place?

Cooper assumes that you’re some nine-to-fiver who doesn’t do creative work. As an opinion columnist, good ideas can strike me anytime, anywhere. That’s true for a lot of different kinds of people. For many, a laptop is merely a writing tool, and a source of information and inspiration.

An increasing number of digital nomads are traveling without taking time off. The laptop *enables* travel and time away with family rather than creating a problem while traveling.

It appears to me that Cooper is making a lot of assumptions, and using his credentials to give credibility to his anti-technology bias.

Indeed. There are both good things and bad things about taking laptops on vacation, but it’s a choice that each person should make for themselves — and if it makes sense for them, it’s hardly “stupid.”

Filed Under: laptops, vacation, work