OLPC XO-1: The $100 Laptop (That Wasn't)
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
- Technology -- and the access to information that it brings -- has long been considered a huge benefit to education. An organization with lofty goals and noble intent tried to change the world with a $100 laptop, but found out the hard way that doing so is much more complicated than it seems.
Sources:
Mess of AC adapters photo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO...
Solar panel photo: wiki.laptop.org/go/File:XO_and...
Clamp charger photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Steve Jobs photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Nicholas Negroponte photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
"The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality", The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2005.
OLPC with Windows XP boot screen photo: www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2...
"Microsoft to Try Windows XP Out on OLPC in January," abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCW...
Asus EeePC photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Engadget XO-1.5 article: www.engadget.com/2009-04-18-x...
XO-1.5 motherboard photo: wiki.laptop.org/images/9/93/XO...
XO-1.75 laptop photo: wiki.laptop.org/images/e/e2/XO...
XO-1.75 laptop photo: blog.laptop.org/2012/09/04/are...
The Verge article about the XO-4: www.theverge.com/2013/1/6/384...
Psivewri's XO-4 video: • This Weird Laptop Look...
Nicholas Negroponte TED talk: www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_ne...
"The Charisma Machine" by Morgan Ames: mitpress.mit.edu/books/charis...
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Here in Uruguay it was everywhere since it was a government backed initiative, we called them Ceibalitas because the project was called Plan Ceibal. I was one of the first kids to get one, the rollout started in my city. Never got any revisions but I know of kids that did, there was a blue one too which ran a standard build of linux if I recall correctly! We never used it as a learning tool in class but I know teachers had to go to computer courses to try and give them some use. A lot of local game devs released games for the XO, usually paid for by brands who wanted to make a game with their brand on it, but there was also some government backed videogames which focused more on the learning side, maths and history were the main ones.
Interesting
(and yes, it ran doom)
Las viciadas al Doom que pagamos en eso, yo recibí la mía en el 2007 por ahí
With an average eye cue of 96, they might have actually done some good there. But rest assured the do-gooders were NOT targeting you. They were targeting countries were the average eye cue is in the high 60s to low 70s (yes, there are many) or India where it is 83.
People REALLY want to believe eye cue is wrong or fake or entirely a product of the environment, but there is no one measure of people more accurate and with more predictive power than this simple number.
People also have no idea how well these figures are studied and how even the US government keeps a running tally of what jobs require what eye cue score range and how no amount of training can make up for the deficit in eye cue. (youtube will autodelete my comment if it contains the correct spelling). Conversely, no amount of lack of training (with a few exceptions requiring a LOT of acquired knowledge) will keep high eye cue people from performing well at a job after an initial period where he learns the job.
One reason so many of us now go to college is because the government has made eye cue testing prospective employees de-facto illegal. In MANY, MANY jobs, a college degree is just a proxy for eye cue.
The blue one was probably Intel's Classmate, the OLPC competitor they made at the time
Quick fact add: The screen was only 1200 pixels wide with backlight off thanks to a neat prism effect. Light coming in would use the red/green/blue pixels as individual shades of grey. With light coming from the backlight they show as RGB. Really neat design.
Yeah, the screen was 1200 x 900 pixels, but a color dot was actually three pixels (RGB). It was actually difficult to establish a screen resolution equivalence in RGB mode. The best conversion I was familiar with was an effective resolution of around 700 x 500 (resolution divided by square root of 3). However, that was still just a convention, you had 1200 x 900 resolution, but only color information at a third of that.
It was great that it was perfectly readable in direct sunlight. Was a neat device overall. The company that made the transflective displays tried to enter the general market too but ended up folding sadly
I never understood why this panel type never made its way into other consumer electronics.
@@frankdogui7195 It was designed to be efficient and practical, and most importantly, did not glow an obnoxious bright blue like all consumer electronics of the early 2000s.
I would like to see that screen on a phone
Here in Uruguay it was the computer that WAS, we were the biggest buyers of these things, and it really worked. Every child on primary school had one provided by the government, with these we started the infrastructure that allowed us in today's pandemic (with newer PC's) transition from classes in school to classes from home flawlessly, with no child left behind. I live in a country that not everyone can afford having a computer, but these were the stepping stone to a an amazing education system for public schools, and I'm very grateful for that.
I mean Uruguayan education is still very underfounded and has a lot of problems but what you say is true.
When I was a kid we had nothing like quite literally I remember all we had in the house was a single bed and I remember this program was just starting. My first ever computer was an XO 1.5
As a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Zanzibar when this was announced, trying to run a secondary school computer lab - I was desperate for this project to succeed.
Ah, Peace Corps volunteers.. they once visited my town, when I was a high school student. They taught the English class for 3 months and the most thing I remember was that they used Powerpoint's Super Mario educational game (means: the game is made in Microsoft Powerpoint) as a tool for learning. Cool.
Wow, Karibu Sana
This was such an ambitious project, and I'm glad to see that it got out to a not insignificant number of children. We need more efforts like this today.
The better news about edutech is the sugar desktop is a relatively easy to set up on a lot of distros. Including those that run on Raspberry Pis.
"not insignificant" = "significant"
Smartphones have opened up a big gap for the developing world. It's not as useful as a laptop but far cheaper and has opened up the internet and computing for millions (if not billions) of people.
for what? ... not even the creator of Half-Life (Marc Laidlaw) has a compunter anymore >> ua-cam.com/video/PadfhL29nOo/v-deo.html
@Zaydan Naufal Problem with phones are its form factor, its tiny screen and limited productivity use.
But then phones can be laptops if plugged in with laptop-liks accessory. Sadly this feature is still exclusive among flaghsips.
Well at least there are cheap tablets these days.
I remember seeing the commercial for the "Give One, Get One" campaign on Cartoon Network as a kid. I wanted a laptop so bad and I thought this thing looked so cool!
I still think it's an impressive piece of technology for its time and I'm glad to know that so many of them were shipped to children who needed them. Imagine how amazing it would have been if OLPC were able to meet their goal.
They paved the way for netbooks so they kind of did
One place where it really failed, especially in hindsight, was going with an x86-based system. ARM has proven to be a far better system in low-power devices, and the Raspberry Pi project shows what the XO *could* have been, if they hadn't been strongarmed into using an x86 chip.
@@watchm4ker well i mean they did use an arm chip for 1.75 as stated in the video
@@sinphy superseded by the Raspberry Pi and for lower cost.
There goal should have been for all kids, not just kids in other countries.
I had one, and the screen is actually genius ! I always wondered why they didn't generalize the technology on phones and other embedded devices that are often used outside and where battery life is important. It was perfectly readable in the sun, way better than any backlit LCD, and used less battery since you could shut the backlight off.
I believe some adventure GPS devices like the garmin Montana use similar screens.
I would like to see that screen too in mobile devices, the last one I used such is the Nokia 6600 or so, and the Pebble Watch. That had a similar display.
@@jaikishorsharan5971 They were available for a while - the display technology was shifted off to a company called PixelQi but they didn't seem to get any significant design wins and the company seems to be defunct - there is a website, but it appears to just be a link farm with no relevance to displays.
If a neat technology isn't implemented anywhere my first guess is some copyright/legal stuff.
Or maybe it isn't as neat as everyone thought.
My watch has a display like that (some Sharp Memory LCD) and It’s fucking brilliant. I don’t get it either.
The biggest thing in transflective displays right now besides e-Ink is TCL making a tablet with a transflective LCD, but it already seems to be delayed.
To be fair, contrast, colors, etc... are far from being as good as classic LCDs. It's more in line with LCDs from the early 90's... I don't know if it' s because there is less investment in that tech, or if the transflective part just prevents it. So I suppose most people wouldn't want that on their shiny new phone, but still, I would like to have the choice to get a phone or laptop with that kind of screen...
Re: the hand crank charger. I was involved in a community XO project, and one of the tasks we chose was doing generator based charging. It turned out to be a bust -- the XO's battery could only sink the equivalent current to charge at a rate of about 2 1/2 hours to full charge. You'd have to spin that crank forever. The closest we came (concept, never built one) was to use a bicycle to drive a generator, charging a larger battery, then using that battery to charge XOs.
Worked for Gilligan
You just needed more coconuts.
And the Professor
Mary Ann wouldn't hurt either
a hand crank by a human is about 10 to 15 watts before it get to hard to turn. charging something the size of a laptop battery would litterly take days.
@@gogereaver349 The XO's battery was about 25W, so it would have taken about two hours to charge. Unfortunately they never got the power consumption down to what they hoped for, so a charge was only good for about two and a half hours (on color backlight) 😀.
EA even made SimCity opensource during the project.
I find it to be extremely noble what has been attempted here, of course today things look a little different and people would rather pick up a low priced tablet which too is fine as long as everyone has access to technology.
Aw, I remember these things, and the give-one-get-one campaign. They had really good intentions but hitting even the price they did was a hard task.
Still awesome to see these now and again though, I don't doubt that out there somewhere they helped inspire someone!
@hillbilly tech yeah nope, I got mine in 2007, It was the only computer in my house for like 6 years after that, although my case wasn't super common still, plenty of kids relied on them for years, the program is still going on in my country, just that now kids get more normal-like laptops running both linux and windows
@@LeoMkII Did the arrival of Chromebooks make a big difference?
I actually had high hopes for this project - the trials they did in Africa for deployment that were fundamentally sound - but it was depressing to see this fail.
3 mil made wasent relly a fail. its just netbooks and now chromebooks took there place.
All the aid to Africa fails. Waste of fn time.
I remember reading and hearing about this at school as a kid. We tried to raise money to get these computers for kids in 3rd world countries. I was fascinated by them but I knew they had to be pretty slow.
Got one, got one of the blue as well, i remember making a car that followed a color line around a track(by shamelessly ripping off the logic of another project, dont remember what program it was made on tho)
I also remember spending 99.9% of my time using the blue one in linux, playing wine games and listening to "Numb" and "In The End" by Linking park (i was in high school)
Tbh they where amazing machines even tho i hated how underpowered they where (the blue one tho played quake just fine in wine), but now i can appreciate them for what they meant to be
Sadly all their capabilities were wasted by my teachers never using them at all, for pretty much anything
They just become videogame consoles and media consumption machines for the kids who got them, wich it was cool lmao but not really their intended purposes, although i can see some linux fans growing up with the blue one
Contenxt: im from Uruguay and i got both via the "Ceibal Plan" like the other guy in the comments
"Sadly all their capabilities were wasted by my teachers never using them at all, for pretty much anything"
When I was watching this I was thinking, "That seems nice and all, but the teachers still have to learn how to use it and figure out how to incorporate it into their classes."
@@DevineInnovations my kids are showing their teachers how to use their computers. My 6 year olds has learned how to play mine craft on his own. I die in about 10 minutes.
Though I guess he has had you tube and a lock down.
Even as pre schoolers, they'd play games on the library computers and work it out themselves. Some educational - color matching and numbers and stuff. Others not so much.
You used to be able to get sugar to run in a window or a VM or something. I reckon kids would have been able to learn it.
I liked the idea you could even hand-crank it, in order to keep it going. The idea of low-powered devices for certain emerging markets wasn't off but what really probably killed this whole endeavour off in the end were subsequent advances in mobile technology and networks; as an educated guess, the cell phone became the real gateway to the Internet.
You're not wrong. It was the inexpensive android phones that finally got mass adoption in my country (Bangladesh). Computers are still miles behind.
IIRC early concept art and mockups of the device had a hand crank built in, but that proved infeasible.
I would imagine if u were in a place with no easy access to elextricity, then wifi would also be MIA
@@aoikemono6414 Not entirely. While internet access would be a problem, the laptops were capable of mesh networking, so you could still send data around a classroom.
Netbooks definitely happened due to the XO-1, and netbooks drove down the cost for parts, like screens and made Intel create the ultra-low power CPU category of Atom and it's later iterations you can buy to this day. Even if the XO-1 itself didn't happen on the scale it was supposed to, it definitely helped to make computers cheap enough in 3rd world counties, so in a sense it succeeded.
I was about to say the same. When I started messing with computers, notebooks where very expensive. The first one I got was a EEEPC Seashell from Asus. While limited, it actually was usable for the time and served well for several years in my family.
I really wanted to like netbooks. I remember buying one in 2011, just as the fad was dying down. It came with Windows 7 Starter - it was utterly unusable, a simple security update would freeze everything. Only with Lubuntu did it become a relatively good tiny laptop.
And while netbooks were sort of a flop as well, ultimately they evolved into Chromebooks which seems to have finally cracked the problem of creating cheap, but still decent laptops.
@@MattExzy Yes, Lubuntu is very light and great on system!
Netbooks where a false economy though
From the moment it was launched I've wanted one, even knowing its limitations. The transflective display particularly caught my eye, I wish we had those in phones.
I was very interested in this project back when it was being developed. I was a child at the time, interested in computing and always wanted a laptop. Sadly we didn't have much money in the family so I was stuck with an old PC. I was sad when the project was delayed so many times and didn't really achieve its goals. But I guess that in the end Raspberry Pi did what this couldn't. It brought a small, cheap and capable computer into hands of everyone by mostly economies of scale.
isn't it awesome though that right now one can buy a used older laptop for like 20-30$ that will actually work for basic usage
Dude the ability for the screen to fade to monochrome is awesome! I wish more devices had this feature.
This brings back beautiful memories, I worked with the team as an ambassador for this project and we were able to deploy 4000 laptops to students in schools in underserved communities in NIgeria. We trained teaches and students to make this work, we enjoyed a good level of success.
I got one for $6 at a goodwill, compiled my own kernel, and made it setup for doing terminal access (wired one of the USB ports to a serial adapter internally)
I love its ease of repair, and even after loosing screws i found it keeps spares in the handle (remove screws by battery to get the handle cover off)
@@Farquad76.547 when taking a laptop to a site that is in a scary part of town (or an area with a lot of dust and dirt and other airboarn debris) to reprogram a router/switch, do i want to take a $600 laptop that could break by looking at it wrong, or a $6 kid proof one, (also why i have a cheap 200$ hp cloud with linux on it.
cheap laptop i dont care about goes with me to bad parts of town in areas that are not suited for laptops, and good laptop goes with me to sites were i dont have to worry about it.
although i rarely do that stuff any more, i do like having a cheap durable laptop for jobs i dont want to take my expensive one (to me) out on. (although i do have like 10 laptops, ranging from the OLPC and some P4's to a 2010 macbook, and my main lenovo)
@@jjjacer Plus the built-in "anti-theft" feature of the fact that it looks like a kid's laptop (which was actually part of the original design specs)
If only a modern laptop was available that's sturdy like this and repairable, with a removable battery. I like how the swivel-screen doubles as an e-Reader.
So, a Framework laptop, but with a rotating hinge?
the most modern laptop like this is probably the x230t and x220t thinkpads
Bullshit. Most laptops of the era were at least as serviceable.
Its one of thouse things that people think they want right up to the point when they have to put money down. Then other factors like weight, performance, looks or upfront price win out over repairability.
@@KonradZielinski Check the reviews on the Framework laptop, maybe even check one yourself if you have the time. Might also want to check out Pine64 devices. Then come back and tell me it's not practical or convenient.
I wasn't aware of the mesh network problems. When it was still an idea, I thought this would be a game changer.
The mesh network was the least of the problems. I tested one and everything was slow, the display was already tearing apart and the keyboard was not really child-proof
A 3hr at best mesh network that relied on a slow computer. Ambitious I guess.
The port cover/hinge lock/WiFi antenna was so smart, and so was much of this thing's design. They were clever and functional, with a clear goal in mind. Kudos.
shinzu sasageyo
Ahh yes, the infamous XO Laptop. I remember it well. Never knew the details or history behind it, but I do remember the little Princess spending time on it and enjoying it's limited features and games.
Actually Uruguay was the first country to full go on with the initiative, and though even the learning goals of the OLPC project weren’t fully completed (education is a mess still to be solved here), it may have reached a way larger goal: it hugely leveled the technical gap between social and economic situations inside the country, giving all children a chance to access the internet, communicate, learn and grow. Though it ultimately failed, the OLPC project did some real good during the process and deserves some merit for that.
Funny info: Plan Ceibal commited ilegal things about the root password of the OS and the Bootloader unlocking process
@@iiLH_hates_furrys really?
@@Marchelo1899 yes
I grew up in Uruguay, and we had those computers when i was like eight or so, it was the most awesome thing a 3rd world country kid could ask for, with internet browsing, some flash soupport (sometimes flash games worked fine others were like 3 fps) and most important it had a Doom port, which played very fluid on the machine. Had some good memories watching this video.
Very interesting video. I remember the hoopla about these and thought $100 was an amazing target price because laptops were pretty expensive at the time. As Collin said, there were no $120 plastic chromebooks you could pick up at Walmart like you can find now. I remember buying an MSI Wind netbook a little after this and was amazed I could get a computer for $300.
I went to eBay to see if there were any X0-1 machines available and was surprised to see that they still fetch a pretty good price around $70 with shipping for a working device. I am not sure I would want to spend that much but they do kind of feel like they could be a collectors item. Trying to decide how mad my wife will be if I stack another "vintage" laptop in the closet.
Yeah, I remember watching this closely at the time. Back then a laptop seemed like a completely unattainable goal for a kid. I was heartbroken when the Buy One Give One program happened and it was 400 dollars instead of the promised 100. Eventually I ended up getting an Acer Aspire One (I believe it was around 200) and ran that thing until it died.
The problem was, the reason there were no $100 laptops at the time was it was an impossible price point to hit. It sounded good in the media, but to try and reach it -- they failed anway -- they totally crippled the machine.
I always liked this little Shrek laptop. The idea of very low powered machines for students in poor countries was definitely a good one even if it didn't quite pan out.
the XO 1.5 was my first ever working computer, then the magallanes (or however you call it) and well, now I got my own desktop pc, but this was my first ever experience with linux, and I spent hours tinkering with the OS of the magallanes since it was a somewhat custom Ubuntu distro, and I managed to install all sorts of oses, that was the first time I really got interested in trying out linux distros, I installed windows XP, Manajaro, Ubuntu (the original one not the one provided by the government), puppy linux and lastly I installed debian when I already knew a bit more about linux and started to dislike some of the changes cannonical was making to ubuntu.
I vaguely remember reading about this in a magazine when I still was in primary school.
Nice to see a video about it after all that time, I almost forgot it completely.
I remember seeing these on Nickelodeon or something back in the day.
Thanks for reviewing this. You did an excellent job of capturing the OLPC story in a nutshell. I still have mine from the buy-1-give-1 program, and I still remember the struggles and trials of the program.
That display is actually pretty dang sweet. I really like the idea of turning the backlight off and having it switch to a B&W readable mode for outdoor use.
I remember these! I was really interested in the mesh networking idea combined with the semi rugged construction. Was sad these never really made it and stuck around. I'd love a laptop with some of the XO's features and modern specs
While not a laptop, look up what the Raspberry Pi foundation's been putting out. That gives an idea of what the XO could have been.
@@watchm4ker I have a few different Raspberry Pi's and love them. It does carry on some of the spirit of the XO-1.
@3:32 A Li-Fe it looks like they went out of their way to use battery chemistry that has a high cycle life in the thousands compared to lithium ion batteries which often rated for a few hundred charge cycles! Or was that chemistry more of a thing in the early 2000s? It's just starting to become more mainstream in 2021.
This was definitely late 2000s. I remember it well. I donated to the project.
Thank you so much for this review. We all know that project was a failure, but normal reviews just focus on that. You took the time to take it apart and analyse the components.
REALLY well put together video man! All I remember was the buzz when the idea came out but I didn't hear about the outcome. All the info you presented was new and very interesting!
I was just thinking about this machine the other day. It had so many great ideas and I loved its flashy but functional design. I kind of wish the screen technology had made it into other products.
I wonder if they would have been able to keep the cost down if they'd thought about selling it to consumers. I mean, the more you make, they cheaper it becomes.
That screen technology really is amazing.
There was a lot of interest among first-world buyers, which is why the buy-one-gift-one program was initiated. I think the big problem was simply the difficulty of manufacturing enough of the things at that price point. They could have made a lot more, and still probably sold them all.
Hi Colin. We've had a few of these dropped off at our refurbishing project over the years. I've learned more from your single video than I did playing with the XO. Thanks for continuing to put out great content!
Damn, 3 hours of battery life with a 3 Ah battery? My laptop has a 70 Wh battery and lasts around one hour. This shrek laptop is probably the most battery efficient thing i've seen
My my iPhone is a little supercomputer with a 3ah battery and it lasts about 10 hours.
@@adaml.5355 I am sorry but I have to correct you on this, your phone battery is wayyy smaller than this laptop. Yes, it's 3ah but the capacity is not the same because of different voltage, using watthours is the most accurate way to compare battery capacity, Ah depends on voltage.
chromebook have simler tdp and run like 11 hrs these days.
I remember being 7 or 8 years old and wanting one of these when it came out! Unfortunately, like a lot of us, I lived in a first-world, western country and it wasn't eligible for purchase in the US, even though we grew up pretty poor. I really wanted my own laptop because I wanted to do stuff without worrying about my dad beating my ass when I kept breaking the family PC. Eventually I got a refurbished Pentium III Compaq Presario, which was probably spec'd at the same level as the OLPC even though it was almost a decade older.
Totally could've seen myself messing around with the OLPC, probably would've given me earlier exposure to Linux too. But I totally would've tried to get Windows 98 and XP on it too.
I really wonder how it would do compared to older machines as a retro setup.
Yeah, you're so unfortunate that you were born in a first world country... Also it was available for a short time in the US under a "buy one, give one" type arrangement.
Maybe they should have started by selling to low income families in first world countries before trying to sell to every third world country. It would have been easier and they could have made more money to put back into the company.
@@DevineInnovationsthat probably would have been a better way to go about it. Now it seems every kid in the US has a laptop or tablet for school.
I remember wanting one too, they were fully deployed to public schools where I was living at the time …but I was going to a lower middle class private school. Too poor to buy a laptop too posh to get one from the government.
I remember thinking the OLPC thing was the coolest back when it was announced. I recall writing a thing about it for school. I had no idea about the subsequent versions though.
I remember in 2007 seeing this and I felt like I was born 15 years too early.
Uruguay Nomah.
We used this machines around 2007 to 2014 in public schools since the government approved a plan which consisted of delivering one of this machines to each student of the country.
If I recall there where 3 variants of this machines this one shown here, an updated model with a plastic shielding around the keys and then there was a blue variant that was more powerful and it ran Gnome (if I'm not mistaking).
They weren't really good, but it could run Doom at least, there were even a few games made here for the machine by indie devs and some by the state, there were also a bunch of flash games compilations made by homebrew sites.
I remember hearing about this! In 2007, as a Primary 4 (≈ 5th grade) student, I'd often have my dad save me the technology and Sunday comic sections from The Straits Times newspapers he would read* on Wednesdays and Sundays respectively, and I heard about the XO project through the former. News of the XO prototype was how I heard about Linux at the time, but I didn't know how to get a Linux distro at the time, later hearing about Ubuntu 7.10 through a later edition of that newspaper, and trying Ubuntu 8.04 inside VMware Player. Back then, Linux-based desktop OSes felt like a whole different world to me, and today, I live in that different world most of the time, still returning to Windows frequently for some developers like Evernote and others who don't offer their software on X/Wayland Linux/BSD, but do on Windows.
*He stopped doing that many years ago when he switched to reading through Nestia, and when other people share articles with him.
I always wondered what happened to these! Glad that you decided to take a look at one!
This project was was great, and really ambitious with the specs and price for that time period. If it was started a few years later I'm sure they would have started with an ARM chip. They got 3 million out and that's not bad. The membrane keyboard is irritating, but it makes sense for wear, and also probably made it much easier to customize alternate language layouts.
6:12 The whole point of OLPC was to encourage experimentation and reward curiosity, hence the easy access to the parts underneath the GUI. I believe also the magnifying glass key actually means “view source”, as in “look at the source code for whatever is running now”.
One unusual thing about Sugar was its “journal” system, where you had a systemwide list of all the activities you had done recently, including links to the documents you had worked on.
The Sugar project is still active, even today. Packages are available in the standard Debian repo.
Fascinating. Great videos as always!
Oh dude, I remember REALLY wanting one of these as a kid.
I had 2 revisions (2010 and 2012 models) of these (my first one got replaced for a newer one) I loved it especially the second one since it had a ability to switch System, i remember emulating old windows stuff with wine and playing flash game compilations. So good memories. I wish I could get a new one
I have an even older version, a prototype that didn't even have enough RAM to run the released operating system. (128MB I think), and therefor was obsolete month after I got it.
Fascinating story. I had never heard of this little system. Thanks Colin!
Fantastic video, thanks for sharing. I was following this project very closely back in 2006/7 and there was so much will for it to succeed. I guess as you say, it reached some children so I can’t see it as a total failure. Also, thanks so much for the tip on the book, I had no idea someone had written that and I’ve just ordered it!
I remember reading a big article about this in Wired, it was pre release, so I always wondered what happened with it. Thanks for this
I love that Homestar Runner's laptop was based on a real computer!
These came out when I was 9 and starting to get more aware about charity initiatives and I thought they were the coolest thing
The primary school I work at here in Australia, we received 150 of these, didn't cost us a cent.
We got about 40 or so in 1 shipment, and then at a later date they supplied us with the rest of them.
They also supplied us with charging stands, and several repair kit boxes (New screens, keyboards, antennas, etc...).
All of ours initially came with Sugar, and BEFORE we were even allowed to receive any of the XO's, we had to nominate some teachers that had to have training for the SugarOS. Once the training was done, and we received the XO's, no other teacher was allowed to use them.
All our XO-4's came with the mesh capability, and they were using it quite extensively (This was around 2014).
Eventually we replaced Sugar with Android, but that was really the downfall of the XO, the Android interface just wasn't as nice to use compared to Sugar.
In the end, the OLPC contacted us (around 2018 I think it was), and asked us to return as many as we could, I still have a few left at the school, and still have all the repair kits they sent us.
Someone in my local area was selling one of these on Craigslist last month. While it's a neat curiosity, I wasn't about to spend $800 on it.
Back in high-school I used to repair these. They were pretty fun to work with.
I remember reading about these back in the day, didn't knew that they actually made it into production. Quite an interesting piece of computer history.
Thank you for this video. Although this project failed, it was revolutionary and really did move a lot of technologies forward. It deserves to be remembered.
Nice content as always :D miss a few videos but will enjoy them today ;D
Good update. I had completely forgot about this little pc.
I mean this XO-1 Computer was meant for Education and runs a Custom Fedora Linux Distro OS known as OLPC OS using Sugar, the open-source desktop environment. I really like the design since it has 2 antennas almost like a router.
great video as always 👍😀
thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
I had a coworker who got one of these through the give one get over program. It was an interesting idea.
I love technology! I’ve got the original with mesh capability. I worked for FedEx Office in 2007 in Cupertino California (basically across the street from Apple World Headquarters at One Infinite Loop”. And somehow it was erroneously shipped to me at my workplace. I’ve marveled at this little machine for years occasionally booting it up and playing around with it over the years.
Great video. Thank you.
I knew one of the software devs working on this project and had some hands on time with a few different models. The wireless mesh was pretty cool because (if i remember correctly) they were working on allowing a group of the laptops to communicate and interact without any internet connection or routers.
Good this thing brings back memories, I remember my friend whose father worked NIST on computer systems brought one over and showed me Linux for the first time! I was so enthusiastic about the design which seems so cool yet practical with a handle(important as laptops on the time were heavy) and had cool antenna.
Haha! I owned one of these! (Still have it) I got it on my 4th birthday and there was a doom and sim city Clone on it. That basically was my gaming start. It wasn't terrible. Especially when you are that young
Never knew about that laptop before a few days ago when I was curious about different sub pixel arrangements and saw the Wikipedia page for that laptop. Funny you released a video about it today.
You should do a longer video about the included software and OS. If I remember correctly it was all written in python and you where supposed to be able to right click and view source on just about anything. Good video, thanks you.
I heard about this, even read about in the paper during Bush's run. I've never seen one. Thanks for sharing this!
Have any other laptops used an Li-Fe battery?
I always thought this was a cool idea, I still do. I'm not sure how big an impact it had but the device they came up with seems really well designed.
Not much battery Li-Fe, though 😉, at least in the first iteration
Had two of them fail; one straight out of the box and the other one after 3-4 years of use. I don't think they were very good.
I remember them, never got to use or see one, but it was a brilliant idea that was way ahead of its time.
First of all, thank you very much for introducing a topic I've never seen covered before. I think it would be interesting to put a team together and challenged them to hit that $100 mark through design changes and sourcing components. A lot of nations have components made cheaply by using a miserly paid work force and pocket the margin between cost and price. What if they can be convinced to sell some of those components at cost so that the poor of their own country as well as others could have computers.
already reached with the Pi 4. 35 to $70 depending on the RAM size - 4- 8GB
I haven’t heard about these in a long time! Never thought I’d see a UA-cam video on it.
I remember seeing a commercial sponsoring fruit snacks like Fruit Gushers and Fruit Rollups for a contest where one kid climbs from his fence and running to Africa to deliver one of those laptops to a kid there.
I have two of these XO-1s that I got for free at a swap meet. Both were experiencing the firmware bug that plagued these models. When the CMOS battery drained, it reset the internal clock which then prevented the computer from powering on. Fortunately this bug can be fixed using a serial connection and updated firmware. I made a really basic video ages ago that I titled "Two Laptops Per Adult" documenting my experience with restoring these.
this was actually well thought through with its design, genius
Woah! I remember these were supposed to hit the market and "change the world" I forgot all about them as they got lost in time. I'd occasionally wonder what happened to them.
Thanks for sharing!
I always liked what they set out to do with this device. Lofty and positive ambition!
Imagine my surprise (NOT!) when i heard that Steve Jobs declined to make an Open Source version of MacOS available for this project. 😆
oh i remember these when i was in primary school at the age of 11, it was really bizarre when these were in all the year levels at my school dispite having normal laptops onsite anyway back in 2014.
I have one of these from the give-one-get-one deal. It is really a remarkable device despite the limitations. It is still much more rugged than other portable devices (things like the Toughbook are rugged but much more expensive). It probably pushed the bigger companies into putting more effort into lower-end devices for education.
I almost did that "buy one give one" in 2007 because I was fascinated by the device itself. (Of course I heard later that a lot of people didn't get their orders, so...) It still had a lot of cool features...I remember the main manufacturers took off with their own cheap laptop versions as a result of this, so there's been some benefit.
The only thing I remember about this thing was it's cameo appearance in a SBemail as Homestar's computer
Yes! He did have one!
ah, a fellow HR fan.
Argentinian here, personally used them, loved the experience and the games it could run at the time, charging videos on youtube took like 20 mins, but still have greats memories about it!!
Cool, i had one of these, also the blue one! And seeing this today, from another perspective this could've been such an useful tool for kids development, even tho at my years of primary school we don't use it at it was meant to. I think my teachers needed more pedagogical resources to actually benefit from this laptops "Ceibalitas" as we used to called them here in Uruguay.
I remember the announcement. This project really excited me. It's kind of ironic that it mainly inspired crappy netbooks, but I think it inspired a lot more than that, long-term.
I have a family friend who worked for OLPC, and he had spare prototypes and display models that he gave me when I was little. I still have an OLPC XO-4 Touch engineering sample, it's nearly identical to the production one except for having different speaker mounts (that started to sound awful after a few years), an XO-1.75 hinge cover, a different touch digitizer (mine has since been replaced with a production one), and the serial # sticker says "engineering sample, not for resale".
What I remember about these was that they only slightly predated the netbook craze. Around the time I was hearing about the XO1, Asus launched the EeePC line. For only $350 or so - less than the give-one-get-one cost - you got a smaller machine with a better keyboard, more RAM, and more storage, that was also a "normal" PC that you could easily get XP or a standard Linux running on. Prior to this, small machines commanded a huge premium - see the Toshiba Libretto and Sony Picturebook series for example.
I think at the time the desire for cheap PCs was heating up, but XO1's downfall was it's focus on children, leading many to just see it as a kids toy. But I feel the success of the OLPC project was encouraging the rest of the industry to get costs down, starting with netbooks and eventually trickling down to just about every laptop becoming cheaper and more affordable.
didnt they made the 4gb 701 for like 130$. that beat out them on price and specks.
I remember these! When it was all over the news magazines in the stores, I wanted one if only because it was a portable computer I wouldn't have to treat like a glass sculpture (unlike the already ancient 286 based Panasonic brick I had at the time running FreeDOS), and the original price made it attractive in my poor household. When the final $400 price tag was announced for US households, I instead got a Chinese clone from "M&M Computing" that Christmas, amusingly turned out to be the better machine. We're not poor anymore, but I never forgot that strange green machine.
I remember seeing ads for this when I would stay up far too late as a kid!
I purchased on of these during the buy one/donate one program. I had a lot of fun playing around with it - it could be set up to be very power efficient.
I love that screen idea!
oh man, i remember these! i never even came close to seeing on in person, but it loomed pretty large in my child brain
Wow, a lot of the design of this thing seems super clever. For the era this was made and the price it costed this seems like it would’ve been a really great product.
My primary school used these in Australia, i come by every now and again to pick up my sister and I still see them using it.