XO roadmap updates: XO 1.5, 1.75, and 3

Today we announced our coming hardware lineup, the pending production of the XO 1.5, and published the first concept photos and timeline for the XO-3 tablet.  Here’s the press release:

ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD DRIVES BREAKTHROUGH ADVANCES IN REVOLUTIONARY XO CHILDREN’S LAPTOP Product Road Map to Deliver Unprecedented High Performance, Low Power Consumption and Design Innovation at Lower and Lower Cost

Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 22, 2009 – One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, announced today its product road map to deliver robust laptop performance and innovative design for use in the most remote, poor and rural communities and at the lowest power and cost in the industry.

“The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, is a revolution in low-cost, low-power computing. The XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “To fulfill our mission of reaching 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet, OLPC will continue to innovate in design and performance. Because we are a non-profit, we hope that industry will copy us.”

The new versions of the XO laptop will be as follows:

• XO 1.5 – The XO 1.5 is the same industrial design as the XO 1.0. Based on a VIA processor (replacing AMD), it will provide 2x the speed, 4x DRAM memory and 4x FLASH memory. It will run both the Linux and Windows operating systems. XO 1.5 will be available in January 2010 at about $200 per unit. The actual price floats in accordance with spot markets, particularly for those of DRAM and FLASH.

• XO 1.75 – The XO 1.75, to be available in early 2011, will be essentially the same industrial design but rubber-bumpered on the outside and in the inside will be an 8.9”, touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 will be based on an ARM processor from Marvell that will enable 2x speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.75, which will remain in production, giving deployments a choice of processor platform.”

• XO 3.0 – The XO 3.0 is a totally different approach, to be available in 2012 and at a target price well below $100. It will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it. The XO 3.0 will leapfrog the previously announced (May 2008) XO 2.0, a two-page approach that will not be continued. The inner workings of 3.0 will come from the more modest 1.75.

Let us know what you think!

School Server v0.6 released

The School Server is a key component of OLPC deployments — and one that was somewhat late to the stage. So I am pleased to report that there is a new and improved! version 0.6 available.

The main goal of this release is making installation and configuration easier and more reliable. It is an incremental update on the XS-0.5.x codebase, light on new features but strong on the “it just works” side. And very easy to upgrade for XS-0.5.x users.

What is a School Server, you ask? When you deploy XOs to a school, you want a server to connect them to the internet, serve content locally, provide backup  and upgrade services, and more. You can find out more in  our earlier story on it, or jump straight into the wikipage that explains it all.

This release brings:

  • Easier installation. Mysterious ejabberd commands are gone, rejoice!
  • Moodle and the XO authenticate transparently. Register, restart, click the ‘Local Schoolserver’ link in Browse. It just works.
  • Better network scalability. Moodle can directly control the neighbourhood view which is controlled by ejabberd. Now traffic no longer swamps the network and XOs.
  • Delegated security. You can use time-based security even with disconnected or partially connected School Servers.
  • An XO can run as a School Server. Suitable for small schools or groups.  This is still experimental, but is running pretty well.
  • Want to know more?  Read the release notes.

The work for our next release has already started, as people have been working ahead.  More after the jump.

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Kicking off a gen-1.5 development process: Updating the XO hardware

XO + Tinkertoys(Box and Tinker) = Directional Cantenna

OLPC is excited to announce that a refresh of the XO-1 laptop is in progress. In our continued effort to maintain a low price point, OLPC is refreshing the hardware to take advantage of the latest component technologies. This refresh (Gen 1.5) is separate from the Gen 2.0 project, and will continue using the same industrial design and batteries as Gen 1. The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance.

In order to maximize compatibility with existing software, this refresh will continue with an x86 processor, using a chipset from VIA. The memory will be increased to 1 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and the built-in storage will be 4 GB of NAND Flash with an option for 8 GB (installed at manufacture). The processor will be a VIA C7-M [1], with plans on using one whose clock ranges from 400 MHz (1.5 W) to 1GHz (5 W). The clock may be throttled back automatically if necessary to meet thermal constraints.
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XO 9 : OS 9-on-XO

You can add one more OS family to the growing list can be conveniently emulated on your favorite green machine:  Richard Raucci got Mac OS 9 running nicely on his XO, and shows it off online.

Now if only can fix a Mac II emulator so that it runs full-screen, I could hack together a nice More activity for Dave Winer

G1G1 goes international

One Laptop per Child: Give 1 Get 1

Update: We are shipping G1G1 Internationally to 45 countries, through December 31st this year. See details on the late-November countries post.

We have spent the past two weeks preparing for the Give One, Get One fundraising campaign starting on Monday.  Last year’s donors (thank you!) were critical to launching projects in Rwanda, Haiti, Ethiopia, Oceania, Afghanistan*, and Mongolia.  This year’s campaign will begin a new wave of OLPC projects.

The biggest difference this year is that G1G1’s donors are also going global — we are launching the campaign simultaneously in the US and Europe at 11am UTC (6am EST) on the 17th.  (UPDATE: Amazon.com information pages are up, and it is possible to put in a G1G1 request now, but the Give Only and other pages will not be up until later this afternoon.)

Donors in the US will be able to donate and Give a laptop through Laptop.org/xo.  The Get laptops going to recipients in the US will be fulfilled right away.  Donors outside the US will be able to donate through Amazon.co.uk, where G1G1 will cost £275 (currently just over 322 Euros) plus shipping.  The Get laptops for recipients outside the US will be fulfilled as soon as possible.  stay tuned to this blog for more details in the coming days.

Update: the Christmas round of shipments was sent out last week; everyone who donated by December 16th should have received their XO by now, unless we are still waiting on clearance to ship to their country [sorry, Japan!  Fumi, where are you when we need you?].  A final batch of machines will be sent out in January; the program is expected to end on December 31.

Update 2: donors in Australia, Hong Kong, and France are encouraged to donate through pages specifically set up for your country for a tax deduction.

The benefit of working with leading industry partners like Amazon to expand our reach is that our mission becomes clearer, letting OLPC focus on its real purpose: giving One Laptop per Child — at a global level.