One Laptop Per Child Talks

eWEEK Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza interviewed both OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen and VP Walter Bender in the Tech Rising podcast "The Technology of the OLPC's XO Laptop".

Mary Lou Jepsen gave an overview of the XO BTest-4 technology and Walter Bender explained the capabilities of the Sugar user interface.

The podcast is available for download here and the OLPC Talks-produced transcript is below.

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Jim Rapoza: Welcome to techrising, a weekly pod cast dedicated to emerging technologies, their effect on business, people and the world. I'm Jim Rapoza chief technology analyst of e week. Few technologies in recent years have inspired as much interest or discussion as the one lap top per child effort to provide what has been called the hundred dollar lap top of the developing world.

When first discussed many said it would be impossible to build a laptop for anywhere near that price. Then, as the laptop came closer to reality, many took to criticizing it's capabilities and it's mission to provide computer resources as an educational tool for children around the world. Now, the hundred dollar, actually a hundred and seventy-five dollar lap top, dubbed the XO is going into mass production and it will soon be in the hands of millions of children of the developing world.

However, while much of the focus has been on the price of the laptop, many of the most impressive aspects of the XO are in it's technology. The XO has made some impressive breakthroughs in power management, display technology and collaboration. I recently had the opportunity to spend time with the offices of the OLPC and take a first hand look at the final beta of the XO.

While there, OLPC president Walter (Bender) gave me a demo of the XO sugar software inner face and I also got on the phone with OLPC's CTO Mary Lou Jepsen to talk about the many technology innovations of the XO hardware. To start off, I asked her about the recent beta release, about the many innovations of the XO.

Mary Lou Jepsen: Yes, There are two thousand BTest-4's that we built about three weeks ago in Shanghai that have now been delivered to Cambridge and have completed all their testing and so they will be distributed to a lot of developers and kids actually, to test on. People don't realize they focus on the price, they don't realize that there's a stunning technology inside. Some stuff that you would want in your two thousand dollar lap top.

Jim Rapoza: Right.

Mary Lou Jepsen: That you don't have. Where do you start, the industrial design right, the style of the housing is really much more functional than usual laptops, the display, the power management, the security system, the mess network, sugar.

Tags: BTest-4 | Jim Rapoza | Mary Lou Jepsen | OLPC Podcast | Tech Rising | Walter Bender | XO Technology |

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On Thursday, April 26, One Laptop Per Child held a three-hour analyst meeting at their headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The OLPC Leadership spoke on several key aspects of the Children's Machine XO architecture and the program's overall production strategy.

OLPC Talks received exclusive audio tapes of the meeting, transcribed below. Please reference OLPC Talks if you use any quotes or information from the transcripts.

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Mary Lou Jepsen, Chief Technology Officer, One Laptop Per Child:

There's some analysts here, so I thought - Well you might think this is a regular laptop – a regular laptop is for an office worker: It's got office productivity tools, multitasking, it's used indoors, and the power and network are accessible. Ours is completely different: Ours is designed to be used outside, with little or no access to the network – well we have access to the network but the mesh network is not in the last 10 km. And it's about information access and creation tools – those are our goals. And so the old rules for evaluating a laptop don't apply.

So you asked about cost: I can't actually tell you anything about cost, but basically the most expensive part is the motherboard and the chips on it. The mechanicals all together including the keyboard and the touchpad and some other things: about $30. The LCD, the battery, the WIFI, the camera – the videocamera in there, the incredible deal is about a dollar.

Questioner: (inaudible)

Mary Lou Jepsen: Sure

So all together it's right about $175, one key point: Our software cost is zero - $0, $3 is good too, but zero is better. And it's “Open” which means you can change it and improve it, and make it better... So it can give you this gross breakdown.

Questioner (male): When they all get to being distributed, will they all have the handcrank?

Mary Lou Jepsen: The handcrank is an accessory – you get to kind of choose what you want, for example, there is some levings (sic) here, this is about $12, 5 watts, plug it into your laptop, it's a solar panel, you can't break it, it's on stainless steel substrate, so if you live in the desert you might prefer that.

Questioner (male): Is that sufficient to power? That solar thing in bright light, it will power entirely?

Mary Lou Jepsen: Yeah, power your laptop. The Irgay (sic) have done extraordinary now on solar and alternative energy power solutions and I'll try to tell you a little about that.

Tags: Dual Mode Display | Mary Lou Jepsen | One Laptop Per Child | Redhat | Sunlight Readable Screen |

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