Moore’s Law meets its match: the OLPC
Buried in this piece regarding the return of the OLPC’s “Give one, get one” campaign making a return this year, is an interesting statement:
The XO laptop involved is the same Quanta-built netbook powered by a 700 MHz AMD Geode CPU, and the price for two is still $199 (in the UK, it’s £254.)
The only excuse that I can think of for this, is that the OLPC folks must have a humongous inventory purchased at last year’s prices that they are still chewing through. It is the only explanation. I cannot imagine any for-profit PC maker staying in business with year-old part inventory (other than what’s set aside for repairs and RMAs, of course). What does this say about OLPC’s management, that they do not simply do “just-in-time” ordering like Dell, HP, and everyone else? Am I missing something?
I’m a fan of Alan Kay and his ideas around computing, but I think that OLPC is rediculous. As George (and many others) have pointed out, for the cost of 1 OLPC, you could put 50 – 100 books in a school. Which do you think benefits needy kids in developing nations more? One laptop for a child, or 50 -100 books? Granted, textbooks are insanely expensive. Anyone who has been through college in the US can attest to that. Maybe, instead of working on an open computing platform for needy kids, they fols at OLPC can write open textbooks for these kids, and grant governments the copyrights or a license to the books, to print them at-cost for their kids. Doesn’t that make a lot more sense than selling last-year’s hardware at last-year’s price?
J.Ja
Price for two is $400, not $200. You have to pay $400 to buy one and donate one.
Ah, thanks for that, I read it wrong. That makes it an even worse deal!
J.Ja
No, Betanews just fixed it after I informed them.
Apparently OLPC has lower volume than mainstream PC vendors; if they order large batches they have inventory (= higher prices) and if they order small batches they have higher parts cost (= higher prices).
Wes -
That’s a good point. That’s the trap they are in. Even at their current price points, they are still way too expensive for their target markets. Remember, in a lot of developing countries, there may only be a few cell phones per village due to cost (indeed, some people make their living being the "village payphone" in some parts of Africa!)… even at $199, the OLPC is a small fortune. So they can’t get the volume until they are priced like they have volume.
This is the fundamental flaw with the OLPC project, IMHO. Even at the pretty darned low price they are at now (overpriced for what you get, but still dirt cheap for a PC), they are still priced too high.
J.Ja
…and does it really "give one"?
I bought one last year, and tried to track down whether the other $200 went to giving one. As far as I could tell, the money just got dropped into their general operating budget, and was not earmarked to a specific laptop.
At $250, the Eee PC 701 is a vastly better computer in almost every way, and has the one feature that the OLPC doesn’t have: it actually works.