OLPC XO-1: The $100 Laptop (That Wasn't)

[@__.pepper]

Here in Uruguay it was everywhere since it was a government backed initiative, we called them Ceibalitas because the project was called Plan Ceibal. I was one of the first kids to get one, the rollout started in my city. Never got any revisions but I know of kids that did, there was a blue one too which ran a standard build of linux if I recall correctly! We never used it as a learning tool in class but I know teachers had to go to computer courses to try and give them some use. A lot of local game devs released games for the XO, usually paid for by brands who wanted to make a game with their brand on it, but there was also some government backed videogames which focused more on the learning side, maths and history were the main ones.

[@frostedbutts4340]

Interesting

[@__.pepper]

(and yes, it ran doom)

[@suspeh]

Las viciadas al Doom que pagamos en eso, yo recibí la mía en el 2007 por ahí

[@tarstarkusz]

With an average eye cue of 96, they might have actually done some good there. But rest assured the do-gooders were NOT targeting you. They were targeting countries were the average eye cue is in the high 60s to low 70s (yes, there are many) or India where it is 83. People REALLY want to believe eye cue is wrong or fake or entirely a product of the environment, but there is no one measure of people more accurate and with more predictive power than this simple number. People also have no idea how well these figures are studied and how even the US government keeps a running tally of what jobs require what eye cue score range and how no amount of training can make up for the deficit in eye cue. (youtube will autodelete my comment if it contains the correct spelling). Conversely, no amount of lack of training (with a few exceptions requiring a LOT of acquired knowledge) will keep high eye cue people from performing well at a job after an initial period where he learns the job. One reason so many of us now go to college is because the government has made eye cue testing prospective employees de-facto illegal. In MANY, MANY jobs, a college degree is just a proxy for eye cue.

[@d3x7r0]

The blue one was probably Intel's Classmate, the OLPC competitor they made at the time

[@jjjacer]

I got one for $6 at a goodwill, compiled my own kernel, and made it setup for doing terminal access (wired one of the USB ports to a serial adapter internally) I love its ease of repair, and even after loosing screws i found it keeps spares in the handle (remove screws by battery to get the handle cover off)

[@jjjacer]

@@Farquad76.547 when taking a laptop to a site that is in a scary part of town (or an area with a lot of dust and dirt and other airboarn debris) to reprogram a router/switch, do i want to take a $600 laptop that could break by looking at it wrong, or a $6 kid proof one, (also why i have a cheap 200$ hp cloud with linux on it. cheap laptop i dont care about goes with me to bad parts of town in areas that are not suited for laptops, and good laptop goes with me to sites were i dont have to worry about it. although i rarely do that stuff any more, i do like having a cheap durable laptop for jobs i dont want to take my expensive one (to me) out on. (although i do have like 10 laptops, ranging from the OLPC and some P4's to a 2010 macbook, and my main lenovo)

[@Benanov]

@@jjjacer Plus the built-in "anti-theft" feature of the fact that it looks like a kid's laptop (which was actually part of the original design specs)

[@kjcolewelle]

I liked the idea you could even hand-crank it, in order to keep it going. The idea of low-powered devices for certain emerging markets wasn't off but what really probably killed this whole endeavour off in the end were subsequent advances in mobile technology and networks; as an educated guess, the cell phone became the real gateway to the Internet.

[@SMTahmid]

You're not wrong. It was the inexpensive android phones that finally got mass adoption in my country (Bangladesh). Computers are still miles behind.

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

IIRC early concept art and mockups of the device had a hand crank built in, but that proved infeasible.

[@aoikemono6414]

I would imagine if u were in a place with no easy access to elextricity, then wifi would also be MIA

[@watchm4ker]

@@aoikemono6414 Not entirely. While internet access would be a problem, the laptops were capable of mesh networking, so you could still send data around a classroom.

[@t94xr]

I actually had high hopes for this project - the trials they did in Africa for deployment that were fundamentally sound - but it was depressing to see this fail.

[@gogereaver349]

3 mil made wasent relly a fail. its just netbooks and now chromebooks took there place.

[@HonkeyKong54]

All the aid to Africa fails. Waste of fn time.

[@Elinzar]

Got one, got one of the blue as well, i remember making a car that followed a color line around a track(by shamelessly ripping off the logic of another project, dont remember what program it was made on tho) I also remember spending 99.9% of my time using the blue one in linux, playing wine games and listening to "Numb" and "In The End" by Linking park (i was in high school) Tbh they where amazing machines even tho i hated how underpowered they where (the blue one tho played quake just fine in wine), but now i can appreciate them for what they meant to be Sadly all their capabilities were wasted by my teachers never using them at all, for pretty much anything They just become videogame consoles and media consumption machines for the kids who got them, wich it was cool lmao but not really their intended purposes, although i can see some linux fans growing up with the blue one Contenxt: im from Uruguay and i got both via the "Ceibal Plan" like the other guy in the comments

[@DevineInnovations]

"Sadly all their capabilities were wasted by my teachers never using them at all, for pretty much anything" When I was watching this I was thinking, "That seems nice and all, but the teachers still have to learn how to use it and figure out how to incorporate it into their classes."

[@donrobertson4940]

@@DevineInnovations my kids are showing their teachers how to use their computers. My 6 year olds has learned how to play mine craft on his own. I die in about 10 minutes. Though I guess he has had you tube and a lock down. Even as pre schoolers, they'd play games on the library computers and work it out themselves. Some educational - color matching and numbers and stuff. Others not so much. You used to be able to get sugar to run in a window or a VM or something. I reckon kids would have been able to learn it.

[@RandomInsano2]

Quick fact add: The screen was only 1200 pixels wide with backlight off thanks to a neat prism effect. Light coming in would use the red/green/blue pixels as individual shades of grey. With light coming from the backlight they show as RGB. Really neat design.

[@robertmyers5269]

Yeah, the screen was 1200 x 900 pixels, but a color dot was actually three pixels (RGB). It was actually difficult to establish a screen resolution equivalence in RGB mode. The best conversion I was familiar with was an effective resolution of around 700 x 500 (resolution divided by square root of 3). However, that was still just a convention, you had 1200 x 900 resolution, but only color information at a third of that.

[@pikaskew]

It was great that it was perfectly readable in direct sunlight. Was a neat device overall. The company that made the transflective displays tried to enter the general market too but ended up folding sadly

[@frankdogui7195]

I never understood why this panel type never made its way into other consumer electronics.

[@stickyfox]

@@frankdogui7195 It was designed to be efficient and practical, and most importantly, did not glow an obnoxious bright blue like all consumer electronics of the early 2000s.

[@adaneitor]

I would like to see that screen on a phone

[@shadowmixx]

Ahh yes, the infamous XO Laptop. I remember it well. Never knew the details or history behind it, but I do remember the little Princess spending time on it and enjoying it's limited features and games.

[@polaris911]

If only a modern laptop was available that's sturdy like this and repairable, with a removable battery. I like how the swivel-screen doubles as an e-Reader.

[@xerzy]

So, a Framework laptop, but with a rotating hinge?

[@whoever560]

the most modern laptop like this is probably the x230t and x220t thinkpads

[@BilisNegra]

Bullshit. Most laptops of the era were at least as serviceable.

[@KonradZielinski]

Its one of thouse things that people think they want right up to the point when they have to put money down. Then other factors like weight, performance, looks or upfront price win out over repairability.

[@xerzy]

@@KonradZielinski Check the reviews on the Framework laptop, maybe even check one yourself if you have the time. Might also want to check out Pine64 devices. Then come back and tell me it's not practical or convenient.

[@shanecyprian4156]

I remember seeing a commercial sponsoring fruit snacks like Fruit Gushers and Fruit Rollups for a contest where one kid climbs from his fence and running to Africa to deliver one of those laptops to a kid there.

[@ugh.idontwanna]

I was just thinking about this machine the other day. It had so many great ideas and I loved its flashy but functional design. I kind of wish the screen technology had made it into other products. I wonder if they would have been able to keep the cost down if they'd thought about selling it to consumers. I mean, the more you make, they cheaper it becomes.

[@jackkraken3888]

That screen technology really is amazing.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

There was a lot of interest among first-world buyers, which is why the buy-one-gift-one program was initiated. I think the big problem was simply the difficulty of manufacturing enough of the things at that price point. They could have made a lot more, and still probably sold them all.

[@phildavis1723]

REALLY well put together video man! All I remember was the buzz when the idea came out but I didn't hear about the outcome. All the info you presented was new and very interesting!

[@douglasrogers4675]

I have a family friend who worked for OLPC, and he had spare prototypes and display models that he gave me when I was little. I still have an OLPC XO-4 Touch engineering sample, it's nearly identical to the production one except for having different speaker mounts (that started to sound awful after a few years), an XO-1.75 hinge cover, a different touch digitizer (mine has since been replaced with a production one), and the serial # sticker says "engineering sample, not for resale".

[@r.l.royalljr.3905]

Someone in my local area was selling one of these on Craigslist last month. While it's a neat curiosity, I wasn't about to spend $800 on it.

[@Samtagri]

Thank you for this video. Although this project failed, it was revolutionary and really did move a lot of technologies forward. It deserves to be remembered.

[@AnthonyRose]

The only thing I remember about this thing was it's cameo appearance in a SBemail as Homestar's computer

[@cat1554]

Yes! He did have one!

[@Mundwasser]

ah, a fellow HR fan.

[@RetroTechChris]

I always wondered what happened to these! Glad that you decided to take a look at one!

[@KiraSlith]

I remember these! When it was all over the news magazines in the stores, I wanted one if only because it was a portable computer I wouldn't have to treat like a glass sculpture (unlike the already ancient 286 based Panasonic brick I had at the time running FreeDOS), and the original price made it attractive in my poor household. When the final $400 price tag was announced for US households, I instead got a Chinese clone from "M&M Computing" that Christmas, amusingly turned out to be the better machine. We're not poor anymore, but I never forgot that strange green machine.

[@manojloo_13]

Alternative title: The Laptop That Has Shrek Ears

[@jonsouth1545]

A great idea an updated version would have been great during Covid for virtual lessons

[@Смертьвбахилах]

Выдающийся дизайн это вам не чёрный квадрат, спроектировать и реализовать все формы для отливки... Браво!!! низкий поклон и здоровья архитектору. Я бы ещё поменял тачпад с клавиатурой местами, а ручку, в которой всё равно нет микросхем можно в высокую ножку как-то трансформировать. NOKIA PC 😀👍

[@samuelgoad7320]

Good this thing brings back memories, I remember my friend whose father worked NIST on computer systems brought one over and showed me Linux for the first time! I was so enthusiastic about the design which seems so cool yet practical with a handle(important as laptops on the time were heavy) and had cool antenna.

[@JonNettleton]

Quick note. The XO-4 did not have a capacitive touchscreen. In order to keep the Pixel Qi screen, instead we used an IR based touch system using Neonode's technology. This meant it could also be used while wearing gloves, or with any generic pointing device.

[@aether64bit]

The OS this device runs is called Fedora SoaS (Sugar on a Stick). This version is a VERY locked down version of fedora. As the interface suggests, it is meant for children. The OS can also be freely downloaded by anyone if they wanted to run it on a different machine. I guess you could call it the ChromeOS at the time.

[@MrBaconNater]

You should do a longer video about the included software and OS. If I remember correctly it was all written in python and you where supposed to be able to right click and view source on just about anything. Good video, thanks you.

[@Nor-tc8vz]

If I remember one issue was that they were often distractions in the classroom so teachers had to turn the internet off for the students to focus on their lesson.

[@theblubus]

Woah! I remember these were supposed to hit the market and "change the world" I forgot all about them as they got lost in time. I'd occasionally wonder what happened to them. Thanks for sharing!

[@DynV]

A colleague of mine bought one. He said he was expecting a smaller keyboard but not that small. 100$ instead of 200, would likely have made it well-known.

[@RamLaska]

I remember the announcement. This project really excited me. It's kind of ironic that it mainly inspired crappy netbooks, but I think it inspired a lot more than that, long-term.

[@swlextra9537]

Imagine OLPC XO-10 4K amoled display 16GB RAM 512GB SSD 10 Hours + battery capacity Windows 11 High end gaming Wowww 🔥🔥🔥

[@RoyNeeraye]

Awesome trip down memory lane. I used to own one - I think it was the 1.5 revision - before passing it on to my nephew who (mis)used it into oblivion

[@TheBlackPaulMuadDib]

I forgot about this. I backed this at the time with around $10. It was next. I got one for my son and he used it once. But he was also in his teens. As the lopptappy was geared towards grade school children. It was a really neat idea. Also reminded me of the MAC jelly laptops.

[@emileebaker8520]

This was Homestar's laptop when he jacked SBEmails and we got about 3 HREmails. Even with all the problems, it would probably be more functional than some of Strong Bad's computers.

[@Dobaspl]

Today it seems that a similar device would be worth its weight in gold. Priced at $ 100, of course. Remote learning needs cheap, simple computers for every child.

[@johnnycarrotheid]

Buy tablets from China. You've been able to buy tablets from China for under $100 for near a decade

[@noahboat580]

thats some good stuff. meanwhile we had Thinkpads and Chromebooks in our computer rollers-

[@chestnu1]

I remember seeing this on 60 minutes years and years ago. I think its a good idea but maybe it was a little bit ahead of its time.

[@yakacm]

I remember at the time I subscribed to a Linux magazine here in the UK, and these laptops were all over it, I remember there also being at least 1 competing machine, maybe competing is the wrong word, there was at least 1 other project with the same aim, a $100 laptop for kids in less well off countries. I wonder what the impact pf them were, I assume they were at least semi successful?

[@illustriouschin]

I hope this genuinely helped some people.

[@PenguinRevolution]

I actually have one of each version. I kind of collected them because I love Linux and laptops that were designed to run Linux (especially in the 2000's) were interesting. I also like the purpose behind it. Also the Sugar DE is interesting as well. I've played around with them just because I could. I've also gotten other Linux distros running on them as well. the XO-x series were a fun little laptop for me to mess around with.

[@n1vg]

I've still got one of the early ones. My kids were about the right age for it when it came out. I liked the concept but wasn't impressed with the reality, and neither were my kids. Despite the supposed intuitiveness, I've never encountered anyone who could get the laptop open without instruction - every single person manages to remove the battery before they figure out how to get the lid open. The interface was clunky and inconsistent and some of the apps were baffling to use. The overall impression I got is that a bunch of passionate open source developers designed the machine THEY would have wanted as a kid - not the machine the target market wanted.

[@Joel-ew1zm]

I remember reading about this in popular science back in the day probably around 2006

[@ExperimentIV]

i have one of these in my basement i got in a trade of random stuff, and it needs to be fixed, but im not sure how. from what i can remember, i need another functioning one to fix it. i’d really like to repair it to play around with. that display is so unique.

[@TMBGTransformer]

I sure hope no one pours mountain dew on it while I'm visiting historic not-in-front-of-my-computer....

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

I remember having the kid's Android tablet that resulted from this. I went through 3 in about 4 years.

[@Kikay0n]

I always wanted to try one of these…

[@bjoernschumacher5852]

Good idea, but to much custom parts to manufacture. Modern OEM tablet with an attachable rubber keyboard cover would be awesome.

[@plextoob]

What do you mean "Tried to save the world?" I would think 3 million of them would have helped to some degree. It would have been nice to know the impact these had. I remember when they came out and I seem to recall the company I worked for got one to assess for some reason, maybe we were going to do some software work for them, I can't recall.

[@ccateni28]

I loved the XO tablet, but I never found the laptop.

[@LeWolfYT]

Finally found Homestar Runner’s computer!

[@frogz]

i wanted one of these since i saw it in popular science and it was actually better than my pc at the time and i was seriously disappointed in the fact i could never afford to get 1 because i live in the usa!

[@RustyX2010]

After this video the prices on eBay skyrocketed!

[@osval_com]

You are a great storyteller.

[@techjebus]

Its the Shrektop!

[@TheNiteNinja19]

Now you need to take that cute child's toy laptop, and install a Linux port of DOOM.

[@MrManerd]

How did you get your hands on one!!! I read about this many years ago but everything I read said it was for poor countries but I wanted one. Where did you get it and are there any more?

[@Semali_Mutfak]

Beautiful🌸

[@insanebasterd6168]

I had one of those, but i smashed it.

[@hubzcaps]

Mmmm palm spring visor. Tasty

[@Armm8991]

I remember installing Doom on this thing

[@mattm7220]

Laptop specially designed for little kids: Durable bumper and material ✅ Handle for easy transport ✅ Smaller, spill-proof keyboard for little hands ✅ *Webcam* - What the f**k!?

[@StarmanDX]

lol I remember in like 2010-2011 they had these in a Boys & Girls club in Boston

[@BioMystica]

Looks very cool, where can you buy one?

[@KevinFields777]

This was such an ambitious project, and I'm glad to see that it got out to a not insignificant number of children. We need more efforts like this today.

[@lucyinchat]

The better news about edutech is the sugar desktop is a relatively easy to set up on a lot of distros. Including those that run on Raspberry Pis.

[@justsomeguy8385]

"not insignificant" = "significant"

[@CaptainApathetic]

Smartphones have opened up a big gap for the developing world. It's not as useful as a laptop but far cheaper and has opened up the internet and computing for millions (if not billions) of people.

[@Ramdileo_sys]

for what? ... not even the creator of Half-Life (Marc Laidlaw) has a compunter anymore >> kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpLHl5uCZ56hhdE

[@kornkernel2232]

@Zaydan Naufal Problem with phones are its form factor, its tiny screen and limited productivity use. But then phones can be laptops if plugged in with laptop-liks accessory. Sadly this feature is still exclusive among flaghsips. Well at least there are cheap tablets these days.

[@JonThysell]

As a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Zanzibar when this was announced, trying to run a secondary school computer lab - I was desperate for this project to succeed.

[@fabiandimaspratamathesecond]

Ah, Peace Corps volunteers.. they once visited my town, when I was a high school student. They taught the English class for 3 months and the most thing I remember was that they used Powerpoint's Super Mario educational game (means: the game is made in Microsoft Powerpoint) as a tool for learning. Cool.

[@pjsretrogamesmusicandwrass5795]

Wow, Karibu Sana

[@Yakeru35]

I had one, and the screen is actually genius ! I always wondered why they didn't generalize the technology on phones and other embedded devices that are often used outside and where battery life is important. It was perfectly readable in the sun, way better than any backlit LCD, and used less battery since you could shut the backlight off. I believe some adventure GPS devices like the garmin Montana use similar screens.

[@d.e.v.z.e.r.o]

I would like to see that screen too in mobile devices, the last one I used such is the Nokia 6600 or so, and the Pebble Watch. That had a similar display.

[@TrimeshSZ]

@@d.e.v.z.e.r.o They were available for a while - the display technology was shifted off to a company called PixelQi but they didn't seem to get any significant design wins and the company seems to be defunct - there is a website, but it appears to just be a link farm with no relevance to displays.

[@ridhosamudro2199]

If a neat technology isn't implemented anywhere my first guess is some copyright/legal stuff. Or maybe it isn't as neat as everyone thought.

[@sparschaler3536]

My watch has a display like that (some Sharp Memory LCD) and It’s fucking brilliant. I don’t get it either. The biggest thing in transflective displays right now besides e-Ink is TCL making a tablet with a transflective LCD, but it already seems to be delayed.

[@Yakeru35]

To be fair, contrast, colors, etc... are far from being as good as classic LCDs. It's more in line with LCDs from the early 90's... I don't know if it' s because there is less investment in that tech, or if the transflective part just prevents it. So I suppose most people wouldn't want that on their shiny new phone, but still, I would like to have the choice to get a phone or laptop with that kind of screen...

[@MegaManNeo]

EA even made SimCity opensource during the project. I find it to be extremely noble what has been attempted here, of course today things look a little different and people would rather pick up a low priced tablet which too is fine as long as everyone has access to technology.

[@emiliocespedes3685]

Here in Uruguay it was the computer that WAS, we were the biggest buyers of these things, and it really worked. Every child on primary school had one provided by the government, with these we started the infrastructure that allowed us in today's pandemic (with newer PC's) transition from classes in school to classes from home flawlessly, with no child left behind. I live in a country that not everyone can afford having a computer, but these were the stepping stone to a an amazing education system for public schools, and I'm very grateful for that.

[@Reiikz]

I mean Uruguayan education is still very underfounded and has a lot of problems but what you say is true. When I was a kid we had nothing like quite literally I remember all we had in the house was a single bed and I remember this program was just starting. My first ever computer was an XO 1.5

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Aw, I remember these things, and the give-one-get-one campaign. They had really good intentions but hitting even the price they did was a hard task. Still awesome to see these now and again though, I don't doubt that out there somewhere they helped inspire someone!

[@LeoMkII]

@hillbilly tech yeah nope, I got mine in 2007, It was the only computer in my house for like 6 years after that, although my case wasn't super common still, plenty of kids relied on them for years, the program is still going on in my country, just that now kids get more normal-like laptops running both linux and windows

[@Knapperoni]

@@LeoMkII Did the arrival of Chromebooks make a big difference?

[@zdanee]

Netbooks definitely happened due to the XO-1, and netbooks drove down the cost for parts, like screens and made Intel create the ultra-low power CPU category of Atom and it's later iterations you can buy to this day. Even if the XO-1 itself didn't happen on the scale it was supposed to, it definitely helped to make computers cheap enough in 3rd world counties, so in a sense it succeeded.

[@magoid]

I was about to say the same. When I started messing with computers, notebooks where very expensive. The first one I got was a EEEPC Seashell from Asus. While limited, it actually was usable for the time and served well for several years in my family.

[@MattExzy]

I really wanted to like netbooks. I remember buying one in 2011, just as the fad was dying down. It came with Windows 7 Starter - it was utterly unusable, a simple security update would freeze everything. Only with Lubuntu did it become a relatively good tiny laptop.

[@theblah12]

And while netbooks were sort of a flop as well, ultimately they evolved into Chromebooks which seems to have finally cracked the problem of creating cheap, but still decent laptops.

[@mithunlaha1991]

@@MattExzy Yes, Lubuntu is very light and great on system!

[@aborted4196]

Netbooks where a false economy though

[@AndrewMackoul]

I remember reading and hearing about this at school as a kid. We tried to raise money to get these computers for kids in 3rd world countries. I was fascinated by them but I knew they had to be pretty slow.

[@rolaroli]

I was very interested in this project back when it was being developed. I was a child at the time, interested in computing and always wanted a laptop. Sadly we didn't have much money in the family so I was stuck with an old PC. I was sad when the project was delayed so many times and didn't really achieve its goals. But I guess that in the end Raspberry Pi did what this couldn't. It brought a small, cheap and capable computer into hands of everyone by mostly economies of scale.

[@yuriythebest]

isn't it awesome though that right now one can buy a used older laptop for like 20-30$ that will actually work for basic usage

[@robertmyers5269]

Re: the hand crank charger. I was involved in a community XO project, and one of the tasks we chose was doing generator based charging. It turned out to be a bust -- the XO's battery could only sink the equivalent current to charge at a rate of about 2 1/2 hours to full charge. You'd have to spin that crank forever. The closest we came (concept, never built one) was to use a bicycle to drive a generator, charging a larger battery, then using that battery to charge XOs.

[@alexxbaudwhyn7572]

Worked for Gilligan You just needed more coconuts. And the Professor Mary Ann wouldn't hurt either

[@gogereaver349]

a hand crank by a human is about 10 to 15 watts before it get to hard to turn. charging something the size of a laptop battery would litterly take days.

[@robertmyers5269]

@@gogereaver349 The XO's battery was about 25W, so it would have taken about two hours to charge. Unfortunately they never got the power consumption down to what they hoped for, so a charge was only good for about two and a half hours (on color backlight) 😀.

[@efficiencygaming3494]

I remember seeing the commercial for the "Give One, Get One" campaign on Cartoon Network as a kid. I wanted a laptop so bad and I thought this thing looked so cool! I still think it's an impressive piece of technology for its time and I'm glad to know that so many of them were shipped to children who needed them. Imagine how amazing it would have been if OLPC were able to meet their goal.

[@tezcanaslan2877]

They paved the way for netbooks so they kind of did

[@watchm4ker]

One place where it really failed, especially in hindsight, was going with an x86-based system. ARM has proven to be a far better system in low-power devices, and the Raspberry Pi project shows what the XO *could* have been, if they hadn't been strongarmed into using an x86 chip.

[@sinphy]

@@watchm4ker well i mean they did use an arm chip for 1.75 as stated in the video

[@jessepollard7132]

@@sinphy superseded by the Raspberry Pi and for lower cost.

[@JerrySpann-fn4kw]

There goal should have been for all kids, not just kids in other countries.

[@StarkRG]

From the moment it was launched I've wanted one, even knowing its limitations. The transflective display particularly caught my eye, I wish we had those in phones.

[@mattmichael2441]

@3:32 A Li-Fe it looks like they went out of their way to use battery chemistry that has a high cycle life in the thousands compared to lithium ion batteries which often rated for a few hundred charge cycles! Or was that chemistry more of a thing in the early 2000s? It's just starting to become more mainstream in 2021.

[@newq]

This was definitely late 2000s. I remember it well. I donated to the project.

[@Reiikz]

the XO 1.5 was my first ever working computer, then the magallanes (or however you call it) and well, now I got my own desktop pc, but this was my first ever experience with linux, and I spent hours tinkering with the OS of the magallanes since it was a somewhat custom Ubuntu distro, and I managed to install all sorts of oses, that was the first time I really got interested in trying out linux distros, I installed windows XP, Manajaro, Ubuntu (the original one not the one provided by the government), puppy linux and lastly I installed debian when I already knew a bit more about linux and started to dislike some of the changes cannonical was making to ubuntu.

[@TheRealiMTV]

Damn, 3 hours of battery life with a 3 Ah battery? My laptop has a 70 Wh battery and lasts around one hour. This shrek laptop is probably the most battery efficient thing i've seen

[@adaml.5355]

My my iPhone is a little supercomputer with a 3ah battery and it lasts about 10 hours.

[@thangtrinh3237]

@@adaml.5355 I am sorry but I have to correct you on this, your phone battery is wayyy smaller than this laptop. Yes, it's 3ah but the capacity is not the same because of different voltage, using watthours is the most accurate way to compare battery capacity, Ah depends on voltage.

[@gogereaver349]

chromebook have simler tdp and run like 11 hrs these days.

[@r.j.etrogames]

I remember seeing these on Nickelodeon or something back in the day.

[@aronfaine9457]

Dude the ability for the screen to fade to monochrome is awesome! I wish more devices had this feature.

[@RisingRevengeance]

I always liked this little Shrek laptop. The idea of very low powered machines for students in poor countries was definitely a good one even if it didn't quite pan out.

[@vladcampos]

I wasn't aware of the mesh network problems. When it was still an idea, I thought this would be a game changer.

[@luctimm]

The mesh network was the least of the problems. I tested one and everything was slow, the display was already tearing apart and the keyboard was not really child-proof

[@aoikemono6414]

A 3hr at best mesh network that relied on a slow computer. Ambitious I guess.

[@hfiguiere]

I have an even older version, a prototype that didn't even have enough RAM to run the released operating system. (128MB I think), and therefor was obsolete month after I got it.

[@meandmyEV]

Very interesting video. I remember the hoopla about these and thought $100 was an amazing target price because laptops were pretty expensive at the time. As Collin said, there were no $120 plastic chromebooks you could pick up at Walmart like you can find now. I remember buying an MSI Wind netbook a little after this and was amazed I could get a computer for $300. I went to eBay to see if there were any X0-1 machines available and was surprised to see that they still fetch a pretty good price around $70 with shipping for a working device. I am not sure I would want to spend that much but they do kind of feel like they could be a collectors item. Trying to decide how mad my wife will be if I stack another "vintage" laptop in the closet.

[@trashandchaos]

Yeah, I remember watching this closely at the time. Back then a laptop seemed like a completely unattainable goal for a kid. I was heartbroken when the Buy One Give One program happened and it was 400 dollars instead of the promised 100. Eventually I ended up getting an Acer Aspire One (I believe it was around 200) and ran that thing until it died.

[@iocat]

The problem was, the reason there were no $100 laptops at the time was it was an impossible price point to hit. It sounded good in the media, but to try and reach it -- they failed anway -- they totally crippled the machine.

[@ulisesferreira4862]

I grew up in Uruguay, and we had those computers when i was like eight or so, it was the most awesome thing a 3rd world country kid could ask for, with internet browsing, some flash soupport (sometimes flash games worked fine others were like 3 fps) and most important it had a Doom port, which played very fluid on the machine. Had some good memories watching this video.

[@dreammfyre]

Why not show some of the included software?

[@TechforMusicAI]

Actually Uruguay was the first country to full go on with the initiative, and though even the learning goals of the OLPC project weren’t fully completed (education is a mess still to be solved here), it may have reached a way larger goal: it hugely leveled the technical gap between social and economic situations inside the country, giving all children a chance to access the internet, communicate, learn and grow. Though it ultimately failed, the OLPC project did some real good during the process and deserves some merit for that.

[@iiLH_hates_furrys]

Funny info: Plan Ceibal commited ilegal things about the root password of the OS and the Bootloader unlocking process

[@Marchelo1899]

@@iiLH_hates_furrys really?

[@iiLH_hates_furrys]

@@Marchelo1899 yes

[@erwinc.9117]

The port cover/hinge lock/WiFi antenna was so smart, and so was much of this thing's design. They were clever and functional, with a clear goal in mind. Kudos.

[@KonRol-iw9xl]

shinzu sasageyo

[@reggiebenes2916]

This project was was great, and really ambitious with the specs and price for that time period. If it was started a few years later I'm sure they would have started with an ARM chip. They got 3 million out and that's not bad. The membrane keyboard is irritating, but it makes sense for wear, and also probably made it much easier to customize alternate language layouts.

[@BertGrink]

Imagine my surprise (NOT!) when i heard that Steve Jobs declined to make an Open Source version of MacOS available for this project. 😆

[@edumeli02]

Imagine if today a third party company would make products eligible to run Apple software

[@HoboVibingToMusic]

There was for some time, but I forgot the name of it. It was recent too :P

[@supertaba10]

Uruguay Nomah. We used this machines around 2007 to 2014 in public schools since the government approved a plan which consisted of delivering one of this machines to each student of the country. If I recall there where 3 variants of this machines this one shown here, an updated model with a plastic shielding around the keys and then there was a blue variant that was more powerful and it ran Gnome (if I'm not mistaking). They weren't really good, but it could run Doom at least, there were even a few games made here for the machine by indie devs and some by the state, there were also a bunch of flash games compilations made by homebrew sites.

[@jsirius94]

I remember these! I was really interested in the mesh networking idea combined with the semi rugged construction. Was sad these never really made it and stuck around. I'd love a laptop with some of the XO's features and modern specs

[@watchm4ker]

While not a laptop, look up what the Raspberry Pi foundation's been putting out. That gives an idea of what the XO could have been.

[@jsirius94]

@@watchm4ker I have a few different Raspberry Pi's and love them. It does carry on some of the spirit of the XO-1.

[@centurybug]

I love that Homestar Runner's laptop was based on a real computer!

[@WillOnSomething]

I remember being 7 or 8 years old and wanting one of these when it came out! Unfortunately, like a lot of us, I lived in a first-world, western country and it wasn't eligible for purchase in the US, even though we grew up pretty poor. I really wanted my own laptop because I wanted to do stuff without worrying about my dad beating my ass when I kept breaking the family PC. Eventually I got a refurbished Pentium III Compaq Presario, which was probably spec'd at the same level as the OLPC even though it was almost a decade older. Totally could've seen myself messing around with the OLPC, probably would've given me earlier exposure to Linux too. But I totally would've tried to get Windows 98 and XP on it too.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I really wonder how it would do compared to older machines as a retro setup.

[@9HighFlyer9]

Yeah, you're so unfortunate that you were born in a first world country... Also it was available for a short time in the US under a "buy one, give one" type arrangement.

[@DevineInnovations]

Maybe they should have started by selling to low income families in first world countries before trying to sell to every third world country. It would have been easier and they could have made more money to put back into the company.

[@9HighFlyer9]

@@DevineInnovationsthat probably would have been a better way to go about it. Now it seems every kid in the US has a laptop or tablet for school.

[@alicesmith255]

I remember wanting one too, they were fully deployed to public schools where I was living at the time …but I was going to a lower middle class private school. Too poor to buy a laptop too posh to get one from the government.

[@riotone7341]

Haha! I owned one of these! (Still have it) I got it on my 4th birthday and there was a doom and sim city Clone on it. That basically was my gaming start. It wasn't terrible. Especially when you are that young

[@TommyCrosby]

I remember in 2007 seeing this and I felt like I was born 15 years too early.

[@ubongudomah]

This brings back beautiful memories, I worked with the team as an ambassador for this project and we were able to deploy 4000 laptops to students in schools in underserved communities in NIgeria. We trained teaches and students to make this work, we enjoyed a good level of success.

[@lemagreengreen]

Have any other laptops used an Li-Fe battery? I always thought this was a cool idea, I still do. I'm not sure how big an impact it had but the device they came up with seems really well designed.

[@BilisNegra]

Not much battery Li-Fe, though 😉, at least in the first iteration

[@enzoperruccio]

Had two of them fail; one straight out of the box and the other one after 3-4 years of use. I don't think they were very good.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

Good Old Ceibalitas..! Intel's Classmate PC Initiative and the Raspberry Pi killed these projects completely.

[@DanafoxyVixen]

the raspberry pi caters to a very different market segment to what these were made more, so not a fair comparison

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

@@DanafoxyVixen Both were adopted in educational environments both in developed and developing countries. It was the same market and this device got outclassed. The unfair competition came from the Intel Classmate PC, but that was heavily subsidized by Intel and Microsoft as a means to prevent ARM, AMD, and Linux to make a dent in the next generation of computer users and operators.

[@razcodes]

Man I had one of those, as Juanchis said im from Uruguay and all kids had one, I remember it had some kind of TV app on it that we would use to watch TV (Im not sure if it was IPTV) on the class but all the channels were from some obscure east europe country

[@Dojan5]

I remember thinking the OLPC thing was the coolest back when it was announced. I recall writing a thing about it for school. I had no idea about the subsequent versions though.