| OLPC details low-cost laptop Build 2 mods |
Jan. 22, 2007
 The One Laptop Per Child project, which demonstrated the first build of the self-powered laptop to a roomful of reporters Jan. 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is now into its second build of the new green machine.
The project aims to distribute -- free of charge -- millions of low-cost, self-powered, low-cost Linux laptops to needy children around the world, with governments making the purchases. The original cost target for the OLPC laptops was $100, but that number has drifted upward slightly, over the past year or so, to about $150.
Walter Bender, the Cambridge, Mass.-based project's president for software and content gave DesktopLinux.com an update on Build 2, aka "B2."
"As we go into B2, we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the much larger community of people and projects, that have made it possible," Bender said. "It is easy to lose sight of them in the day-to-day engineering we do."
Here is Bender's quick rundown on key improvements in the new build:- Kernel -- "The wireless driver has gone through two rounds of reviews with the upstream kernel networking folks and work continues to get it into the Linux mainline kernel. We are down to 5 to 6 interrupts per second (minus a really bad i8042 driver). This is compared with a ~200 per second in a standard Linux desktop. This will have a huge positive effect on our battery life."
- UI -- "We have made numerous small changes to the UI to try to improve the experience ... [we have improved] the camera. We also spent time pulling together some multimedia extension (MMX) optimizations for our platform that should help with Cairo and X performance."
- Firmware -- "Several new firmware features are working, to be deployed in the B2 build: SD driver for booting from SD; audio driver for startup sound; fixed a longstanding bug that was causing some USB keys (that violate the USB2 spec in a minor way) not to work; a graphical touchpad diagnostic that illustrates the detailed behavior of the "jumping cursor" issue; and Open Firmware can now do the wireless-chip firmware uploading/rewriting process."
- Drivers -- "Improvements have been made in the audio, camera, LED, SD, and NAND Flash drivers."
- X Window System -- "The base driver infrastructure has been upgraded ... and we have been working on the new input system for X. Open Hand's Matchbox window manager has been the platform upon which we have been developing our UI."
About the OLPC laptop
The idea behind the OLPC laptop is to provide children with the opportunity to learn about learning itself -- to explore, experiment and express themselves, an OLPC spokesperson said. The laptops will be distributed in schools.
Two weeks ago, the OLPC project revealed that it was contemplating an arrangement whereby anyone can buy one of the group's self-powered, low-cost Linux laptops for themselves -- provided they buy a second one for delivery to a child in a developing country.
The device is based on a low-power x86-compatible AMD "embedded" processor clocked at 366MHz, with 128MB of DRAM and 512MB of nonvolatile "flash memory," used for programs and data storage. It sports a 7.5-inch 1200 x 900 pixel LCD screen, is equipped with three USB 2.0 ports and 802.11b/g WiFi, and is powered by a built-in rechargeable battery back with a wind-up charger. The OS is based on Fedora Core Linux, and it boots via LinuxBIOS.
AMD, News Corp, Google, Brightstar, Red Hat Linux, Nortel, Marvell, eBay, Quanta, Chi Mei, SES/Astra, and Citigroup are founding members of OLPC. The United Nations and Inter-American Development Bank are its non-profit partners.
The OLPC project, based at the MIT media lab in Cambridge, Mass., is well into its second year. Recently, the New York Times reported that Libya became the fifth country to express serious interest in the inexpensive student laptop -- the others being Nigeria, Brazil, and Argentina . Brazil and Thailand had expressed some early interest in the project but have since cooled on the idea for various internal reasons.
More about the OLPC Project
For lots of background on the OLPC's Linux-based low-cost laptop project -- including features, specs, and a timeline of announcements -- be sure to peruse our comprehensive OLPC special report:
(Click here for further information)
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