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Comment by bugsy | Hacker News Reader

OLPC has a $100 PC, India has a $10 PC, and now these guys have a $25 PC.

What do they all have in common? They all have in common that NONE OF THEM EXIST. Yes, that's right. These projects get announced as if they are factual existing devices, with announcements using verb tenses suggesting they are currently in production and available. But then looking for details we find that no one is sure what the form of the device will be, or what parts will be involved because they are not developed products. That is a deceptive practice. And you know what, people who resort to such deceptive practices aren't the sorts of persons that can manage to deliver the goods.

edit: wow, downvotes, that is awesome. When downvoting, please also respond with a web page where I can purchase OLPC for $100, the India PC for $10, or this one for $25. Thanks.

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The OLPC XO-1 was designed for third-world markets: the only way you could acquire one in the US (and possibly other countries?) was by paying $200, which both got you one and sponsored one for a third-world child. (My cousins actually have one, so I know they exist.) They stopped this deal a year or two ago, though.

The India PC was never $10 outright, IIRC: it was $10 after some rather massive subsidies.

The Raspberry Pi literally went into alpha production a week ago, and software support is in its very early stages. Expecting to be able to buy it right now is a little silly.

OLPC's Give 1 Get 1 program actually cost each donor US$400, of which $200 paid for a donated laptop and $200 paid for a laptop for the donor. I don't know whether they ever eventually got the price close to $100.

I know this because I own an OLPC XO-1 that I acquired through the G1G1 program. See also http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/usa/olpc_xo_laptop_sale.ht...

I have an OLPC XO-1, I used it every week. It is my favorite laptop. I have very good net access with it and use this little gem for my server maintenance needs... cool little thing. If OLPC would do another give-1-get-1, I would pick three.

Now, I want do a little bulk order of Raspberry Pis when they are available and see what I can do with them for my community.

About the downvotes, you COULD buy an OLPC for $200 during the give 1 get 1 phase. I got mine, if you were truly interested in these projects, you would knew that. You're just a flamer...

How the hell did you type on that thing? I have one and I can _easily_ type on an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook, which many people complain about typing on.

I couuldn't come close to touch typing on my XO due to how close together the keys are. I think the feel of the keyboard would have been at least a minor stumbling block even if the key spacing were wider.

Obviously the design must work pretty well for children, so I'm not complaining about its intended use whatsoever, but I have no idea how an adult could reasonably type on it.

As you say, the keyboard was designed for primary school children, who have no trouble with it, and immense trouble with keyboards for adults. You can plug in a cheap USB keyboard, no problem.

How is it a flame? The $100 OLPC doesn't exist, the $10 India PC doesn't exist and this $25 PC doesn't exist. You confirm this with your post and then claim I am flaming and downvotes warranted.

If they exist, where are they?

I might as well post about the $75 automobile we have for sale, details on engine and number of wheels not available as we haven't decided, but the one thing we know is it's $75. Completely absurd to be taking such a claim seriously. The product doesn't exist. Pointing to products that cost substantially more doesn't prove anything. I can buy a new ASUS Eee PC 1015PE Seashell with 1GB RAM, a 1.66GHz processor and a 160GB hard drive for $200. That is something that is for sale and being produced by a for-profit company. OPLCs produced for $200 are not evidence that the $100 OPLC exists. The $100 OPLC never existed, nor did the $10 Indian PC, nor does this $25 PC claim.

The Raspberry Pi doesn't exist because products take time to develop. However, the progress we have seen indicates that it is on track to be launched in November, exactly when they said it would be.

Fantastic, I look forward to purchasing a complete functioning PC for $25. I hope someone is taking preorders somewhere too.

The flame is in the tone, not in the facts. But the power of tone is such that many readers will flame in the facts themselves. Tone alone can discredit everything you say, to the point where you can't even say "Okay, I'm sorry, but […]" because nobody will read past "but" anyway.

Believe me, I've been nearly kicked out of 2 online communities for my tone. Anyway the fighting burnt me out, so I left.

The $100 Laptop could have been done, but OLPC and the buyer countries agreed that it was better to add more memory and storage, and use a faster processor. Also, the dollar was falling during the design phase. So the actual production cost came to $188, and the price to governments in quantity 10K was $189. More than 2 million have been sold, delivered, and put into the hands of students all over the world. (Later designs cost less, and we have every confidence in reaching the $100 price point due to the inexorable working of Moore's Law.) You can buy one on eBay for about $150. I own two, which I have named thing1 and thing2.

The $10 PC from India was a publicity stunt, not a PC, and never went into production.

The Raspberry Pi is $25, needing in addition a keyboard, display, external storage, and networking. That should come to about $150-$200. These guys just now announced the first engineering test build, and you complain that they didn't go into production yesterday.

"Please check your facts before posting nonsense to the Internet."--Beable van Polasm, alt.religion.kibology

I suspect you're right in that the $25 is probably just a BOM cost (and an optimistic one at that). Once you actually try to get it built and delivered into someones hands, especially in small batches, I'm sure that $25 could ballon 2-5x easily.

Nope. BOM cost is well under $25. The price includes a healthy component margin, assembly cost (in the UK), assembly margin, test and OTP programming cost. We are professional electrical engineers; we know how to do this stuff (and in any case, it's not rocket science).

Volume assumption is 10K batches. Anyone think I can't sell 10K of these?

I'm personally buying three (one for me, one each for the kids). I manage a team of unix sysadmins, you've got quite a few sales lined up there. 10K should go in about.. 5 minutes?

I wish you the best of luck in the venture. I hope it's very successful.

Regarding the GPU (BCM2763?):

Can you share any more details on the user space situation? Will there be Xorg/Mesa/Gallium support? Will you be relying on Broadcom's driver team for updates, if any, or do you guys have driver source under NDA with which you can support the GPU in future?

This seems to be the biggest concern for many who are looking at the platform. Just trying to gauge what kind of useful lifespan this board will have with regards to keeping an up to date Linux distro running on it. There's going to be a lot of flux and ABI changes ahead in the Linux graphics stack. Some more GPU details on your Wiki would be great if you have them available.

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