Give a OLTP Laptop and Get One | Hacker News Reader

Give a OLTP Laptop and Get One

businessweek.com

18 pointsluccastera12 comments

I am considering buying one and donating one, but I still wonder if giving a laptop to a poor child in the third world really helps them vs. doing something else like improving their education or health care by $200, or maybe giving $200 worth of microloans.

yeah I was thinking the same thing. would it be better to put my money into kiva.org or olpc?

Glad to see that the "Buy One for Yourself, Donate One" idea is back; I saw a talk they gave in February where they said that idea was off the table (http://blog.seeksift.com/2007/02/28/one-laptop-per-child-hac...).

That was before they were more desperate for money- apparently they have not yet secured an order. They have to resort to selling in the US to raise money and keep the volume up to keep production costs down.

It's not the worst way to raise funds; there's been enough curiosity raised that they should get several takers on that offer (I know I'll participate when I get the chance in November).

It's also interesting why they scrapped the "buy one / donate one" idea in the first place; according to this NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/worldbusiness/24l...):

Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried.

Strange, because so many of the initial reviews were overwhelmingly positive.

Also, it contradicts the official line given in February, which was "they want to focus the production output to kids who need them".

On-Line Transaction Processing? They do that on laptops now? :-)

Just part of the latest outsourcing trend: kids in the 3rd world will make sure your bank statements are up-to-date ;)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=59195

Does someone want to make a VM of the software? It would be cool to try out (Not sure if it requires the OLPC firmware): http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Trial-2_Software_Release_Note...

I ran it on VMWare maybe 6 months ago. It was ridiculously slow.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation

That tends to be a true statement regardless of the antecedent of "it".

donate one? donate money to manufacturers?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com