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Comment by macemoneta | Hacker News Reader

The goal of the OLPC project was to get low cost computers to children that couldn't otherwise afford them. Before OLPC, a 'cheap' laptop cost $1500, with many over $2000. Now, 40 million netbooks - most under $400 - are in people's hands. A secondary used market allows people to get used netbooks for under $200 (thanks, EBay). We all owe a debt of gratitude to OLPC.

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Yes - the secondary market for lower end laptops is awesome. I've set up probably a dozen people on the Latitude D600 through eBay, all of them for less than $200.

I find it somewhat ironic that the cool new laptop from Dell just a few short years ago, is now considered to be a "netbook" class device.

Did OLPC have anything to do with this? It seemed more like the asian computer makers thought it would be a good idea to roll out machines their own citizens could afford, since it's a gigantic market.

Initially, no manufacturers were willing to do this. OLPC began designing and spec'ing the initial machine themselves, then worked with an ODM for manufacture. When countries started showing interest, other manufacturers (like Intel) started jumping in to get market share. Once sales commitments hit million unit counts, many manufacturers (ASUS, ACER, MSI) jumped in, later to be followed by OEMs like Dell and HP.

If OLPC hadn't forced the issue, no one would have cut their manufacturing costs and margins to this level.

This is my memory also. Manufacturers were saying that no one wanted the low powered machines... It wasn't until OLPC was able to sell some of theirs with the buy 1 get 1 and the EEEPC (I own a first generation 7 incher) went on sail and people snapped them up so quickly that I had to stalk the local micro center to get the wife one for christmas... Did the other manufacturers think there might be a market for this.

Now we can get a 1.6 Ghz laptop with wifi + camera +windows XP for under 200$ (Saw the Acer netbook for 189 the other day!). Frankly, while they were never able to hit their 100$ sweet spot I think the OLPC project has been a massive success.

Heck, we may even be able to attribute the push for the cloud... and cloud based applications running in a browser... to the low powered laptop movement started by the OLPC project.

Before OLPC, a 'cheap' laptop cost $1500

Really? I distinctly remember cheap Dell laptops selling for $400-$600 in the Dell catalog back in 2002-2005.

There were sub-500 notebooks, mostly in the 15-inch range, but those were not the precursors of the netbook.

There is a huge difference between a netbook and a 15-inch low-end notebook.

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