Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Once Upon a Time

Yeah I am old enough when there once was a brief fad of digital watches that had pen operated calculator key pads.

In terms of BASIC simple stuff - yeah these are great - cheap too.

But a 4Gig HDD or is that FDD (FLASH disk drive) no make that FCD - Flash Chip Drive...

Fuck me - you can buy 4Gig pen / USB / memory sticks for about $16...

I'd be thinking fuck - for these bucks and the state of technology - at least a 20 or 40G drive would be the go.

The rest thp' I dunno about trying to live in Bumfuck Botswana with one... and the cattle, the dirt and the flies - all in the mud huts, but perhaps being in a family from birth to death is not really 3rd world after all, it's first world.

As the script writers told to the actor who played the chief in Out of Africa - to say to the actor (Meryl Streep) who played the wife and tutor of the village kids - when she said it was essential to give them an education - he replied, "And what good did it do you?" (the westernised english people).

what do I know?

Like most contributors, I will now raise an oppinion based upon nothing else other than a gut feeling or emotional response!

I imagine that the OLPC is a inefficient and poor use of resources and too proporiatry and was designed from the wrong end of the the engineering and product spectrum.

The eepc based upon razersharp chinese logic and perception used more standardised components, beating Henry T Ford at his own game of stacking it high and selling it cheap and letting the customer, economy of scale etc to drive the unit cost and production costs down.

Wether the eepc works in the middle of congo after 6 months who can say?

were as I suppose, your eepc will happily motor along in starbucks (other coffe shops are available) for some time to come?

I'd also wager OLPC is not making major profits (is it actaully a charity?)

ALthough there is a whole other discussion to be had about "profits" and "Charitable" organisations..., in essence charitbale organisations still need to make some profit or have thier losses underwritten by a benfactor, charities do make profits although in theory they put these profits (after "costs", "Expenses" and "Salaries" ) back into the organsiation rather than return it to the shareholders. There have been ongoing debate in the UK regarding htis as many larger charities now pay "commerical levels" of salry to attract "hig performers" on the basis the need to compete, and the way the labour government has hived off core services in health and education to "charitable" organisations.

Whilst I do not detract from local and minor good casues, a number of the big charities ... like Natioanl Trust, Imperial Cancer, RSPCA are actaully big corporations with tax breaks

AA1

For those that don't like the 701, the Acer Aspire One is worth looking it. It's what the 900 series probably should have been.

Almost there already

I just bought an MSI Wind for $299 (admittedly, after rebate), but that was actually a pretty usable computer with 1G RAM, 120G HD and a 1.6 GHz CPU. And these machines were > $600 6 months ago. I wouldn't be surprised to see just normal price reductions to get what's already on the market down within spitting distance of $200 in the next year anyway, even without any innovations or cost-cutting measures.