[geeks] One (Windows) Laptop Per Child

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 @ 15:06 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:

> >> Thoughts?
> >
> >I think given the specs, the price is awfully high.
> 
> Why? The hardware design is built to be simple (something almost NO
> other laptop is, just ask anyone that has opened up a laptop in the
> last 10 years) - the networking and storage are on USB "dongles"
> *inside* the case, so a tech can easily replace/upgrade them, and the
> lack of a spinning HD with the OS installed is a feature that few
> other laptops have. 

It looks to me like they removed a lot of features to get the price that
low, and fully featured laptops aren't that much more money.

We also don't know what the build quality is, how well Embedded XP runs,
what it will actually run (1GB is awfully small), etc.

What can you run on this thing?  Very little Windows software I know of
would run on it.

> This is a laptop with no moving parts, how many similarly priced units
> can make that claim?

Any that you remove the hard drive from and use flash storage with?

> I think a 900 MHz Pentium M can give a 2 GHz Celeron a very good run
> for it's money. 

The current Celeron should run quite a bit faster than a Pentium M.

Maybe you meant a P3 or P4 based Celeron?

> Also, the O/S on the Intel laptop is stripped (Embedded WinXP) vs.
> regular WinXP, and having the O/S in firmware (like, say, a CF card
> inside the case) makes the system somewhat more secure (it is still
> WinXP ;^).

ROM based OS are a little more resilient, but mostly because people
either never modify them, or because you can usually "reset" the system
to get back to a known state (which might also erase all your data).

Also, some malicious code targeting embedded systems has taken advantage
of non-optional events during boot to keep themselves alive, so
sometimes it can be a disadvantage.

What does it do exactly to enhance security?  Are you totally unable to
install drivers or OS hooks at all?

> As for the build, with no moving parts, it has a very good chance of
> being more resilient to drops and other abuses, IMHO.

The vast majority of "build a cheap computer" projects end up with
really bad build quality, and that's what I'm talking about.

Not saying this one is, but I wonder what corners they are cutting.

The laptops that have come down in price are often being sold at a loss
to clear out old inventory, but plenty of them are also obviously
cutting back quality to reach those price levels.

> I think this is a more useful direction to head in for educational
> needs, much more so than a completely "open" set of unique software
> elements on a severly limited platform (CPU/RAM/storage).

I suppose we'll see.

So far I see a nearly 100% failure rate in this area, so I'm skeptical.

It's a noble effort, but the carcasses of past projects are all over the
place.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The determined programmer can write a
FORTRAN program in any language." ]