Comments on: $100 laptop may cost more for Nigeria http://blackinformant.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/100-laptop-may-cost-more-for-nigeria/ African-American culture, news commentary, politics Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:15:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: umbrarchist http://blackinformant.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/100-laptop-may-cost-more-for-nigeria/#comment-5946 umbrarchist Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:37:43 +0000 http://blackinformant.com/2007/12/19/100-laptop-may-cost-more-for-nigeria/#comment-5946 I just got my OLPC-XO a few days ago and am still in the process of fooling around with it. It seems better constructed than I expected. The screen is better than I expected so I guess I didn't really believe what was being said. It found my D-Link access point right away, I just had to enter the pass code. Further experimenting indicates I have to enter it every time I turn on the machine and sometimes it takes multiple tries. I have BYTE magazines going back to the late 70's. In the January '83 BYTE there is a benchmark called the Sieve of Eratosthenes and listings of the performance of dozens of computers in multiple languages. I wrote an enhanced version of it in GNU-C. The fastest machine in that 1983 test was an IBM 3033 mainframe running assembly language. It took 0.0078 seconds but the machine cost $3,000,000. The OLPC-XO took 0.0122 seconds and I bought two of them for $400. The IBM took 0.036 seconds running PL/I. So this funny looking little laptop beat a $3,000,000 mainframe running a high level language that governments and corporations bought in the 80's. That mainframe was first delivered with 8 MB and could be upgraded to a max of 32 MB. The OLPC comes with 256 MB. I haven't tested the range yet but I have read that these XO's can communicate over a distance of more than 1 kilometer. My condo is on the 4th floor and I took the XO down to the 1st floor and it still made contact with my network. This same test failed on a DELL that cost more than $1000. Having little antenna that can stick up may not be stylish but it REALLY WORKS. Style is DUMB! It doesn't include a good book reader though. How this technology ends up changing all societies on the planet depends on what people decide to do with it and whether we let the corporations tell us what to do with it. umbra I just got my OLPC-XO a few days ago and am still in the process of fooling around with it. It seems better constructed than I expected. The screen is better than I expected so I guess I didn’t really believe what was being said. It found my D-Link access point right away, I just had to enter the pass code. Further experimenting indicates I have to enter it every time I turn on the machine and sometimes it takes multiple tries.

I have BYTE magazines going back to the late 70’s. In the January ‘83 BYTE there is a benchmark called the Sieve of Eratosthenes and listings of the performance of dozens of computers in multiple languages. I wrote an enhanced version of it in GNU-C.

The fastest machine in that 1983 test was an IBM 3033 mainframe running assembly language. It took 0.0078 seconds but the machine cost $3,000,000. The OLPC-XO took 0.0122 seconds and I bought two of them for $400. The IBM took 0.036 seconds running PL/I. So this funny looking little laptop beat a $3,000,000 mainframe running a high level language that governments and corporations bought in the 80’s. That mainframe was first delivered with 8 MB and could be upgraded to a max of 32 MB. The OLPC comes with 256 MB.

I haven’t tested the range yet but I have read that these XO’s can communicate over a distance of more than 1 kilometer. My condo is on the 4th floor and I took the XO down to the 1st floor and it still made contact with my network. This same test failed on a DELL that cost more than $1000. Having little antenna that can stick up may not be stylish but it REALLY WORKS. Style is DUMB!

It doesn’t include a good book reader though.

How this technology ends up changing all societies on the planet depends on what people decide to do with it and whether we let the corporations tell us what to do with it.

umbra

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