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Blind to e-book possibilities, the Economist knocks the OLPC machine
January 9, 2008 | 4:32 am
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By David Rothman
The XO machine from One Laptop Per Child isn’t just any laptop, as I’ll make clear in my in-depth treatment later today or tomorrow.
With its high-res screen and ability to fold into a tablet, it’s a stellar choice for e-reading. And that’s totally in line with the literacy-related side of OLPC’s mission. For reading, the hardware is better than, say, the ASUS offerings.
So, just with the e-books in mind, nothing else needed, I’m disappointed by the Economist‘s grumpy review of the XO—headlined One clunky laptop per child.
Ideology ahead of education and technology?
True, the machine has flaws, but it also costs less than $200 and is low powered for use in remote locations. Beyond that, it works great with Opera and FBReader added; may they be standard on the XO! What’s more, the already-bundled software, although far from completely polished, should end up being just the ticket for kids in any country—developed or developing. I’ll explain in my review. We’re not just talking about technology here but ideology. I wonder if the Economist might be looking askance at the open source approach that OLPC is using to refine the software and hold down long-term expenses for cash-strapped schools in developing countries.
But back to the hardware. No longer do I laze back with a PDA to surf for items for the TeleBlog, or at least not as often as before. Instead I’m surfing with my XO. If I want to write on it, I can even plug in a USB keyboard and mouse. So what if the kids don’t have those trimmings available? Hey, the built-in keyboard and the rest of the machine are for them, not me.
(Found via Peter Brantley.)
Related: OLPC and Libraries Should Support Open Systems and Tomorrow’s CES speech today: What will Negroponte say?, in OLPC News.
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Comments:
The Economist article is terrible, a hack-job with much hacking. I would say the greatest problem about the article is that the author does not seem to understand the purpose or market of the XO. He laments that it is not as good as his other laptop. He has not seen a child play/learn with it. He does not seem to understand that tech products get better over time; one can only assume that if he drove a ca. 1907 automobile he would dismiss the future of cars. He does not understand the superior technology of the XO compared to the Everex, the Zonbu, or the Classmate PC — for the proposed markets.
And finally he engages in downright deception, along the lines of:
“A few trials in places like Haiti and Rwanda, together with orders from Peru and Uruguay collectively fell far short of even 1m machines. A clever holiday promotion in North America that offered two laptops–one for the buyer and one to donate to a child in a developing country–for $399 similarly fizzled. Production lines at Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese manufacturer, were left idle.”
The XO continues to polarize the press. Some people get it, and others just don’t understand.
Over Christmas, a five-year-old female relative of mine brought her XO along when her family came to visit. She must have spent an hour showing me how to use various features — take a picture with it, draw on the picture, read a (kid’s) book. She was jazzed. So, anecdote to anecdote, those various stumbling blocks cited didn’t seem to be insuperable. Don’t think she tried installing a Flash player to watch YouTube videos
A feisty response to the Economist article is here.
To extend on one of their points. Even if the machine is buggy, that does not prove that students cannot learn on it. But has the threshhold of frustration been reached?