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PCs at the time were much more expensive, ran closed source Windows (versus open sourced Linux of OLPC), weren’t good ebook readers given their screen technologies, didn’t have mesh networking technologies, and a whole host of other things that made the OLPC far more interesting and hypothetically relevant to the problem they were trying to solve.

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Having owned a range of second hand junk laptops at the time I assure you they ran Linux just fine. As did new machines.

The rest is true enough and I'd add that there wasn't anything nearly as rugged at the price (used Toughbooks, or that style, were more expensive).

There wasn’t anything at the price.

I vaguely recall Intel had some rugged convertible Classmate PC. It was sturdy and the price was reasonable but its performance was bad (like most netbooks).

It was well over double the price of OLPC, and had different functionality.

Yes, I was referring to a rugged (child proof) laptop. I think I got mine around 500 USD, not cheap, but cheaper than the Thoughbook. Hence my reply.

Yes, but the Classmate was created in response to the OLPC laptop. From its Wikipedia page:

> The Classmate PC represents Intel's competitive response to the OLPC XO, whose unusually low prices and use of AMD chips threatened to steal market share from Intel and other major manufacturers.

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