Re: OT: One Laptop per Child

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
likely real cost from this. What would a VAX laptop or an Alphabook
cost? And we need not even go into the shortcomings of VMS for a
project like this.


The OLPC machines are designed to be inexpensive and robust. They were a
real challenge to design/build. They do not have a hard disk, they have
flash disk. (makes unit far more robust).

Obviously, a 1990s Digital would have genetically been unwilling to
start a project for a really cheap vax/alpha.

But when you look at the current technology and prices, surely it should
be possible today to build some cheap machine that can run VMS.

Remember that there are probably a gazillion tax breaks for those
building the machine so their costs are even lower. This is all part of
a humanitarian project.

Say VAX had continued to be developped and Digital had become succesful
again. (just for sake of dicsussion). Say current vaxes ran at 3ghz in a
45nm process.

Those laptops could be using vaxes from 2 generations back, or used the
rejects from current production and set at 1ghz instead of 3.

Real laptops today cost a lot because, as a status symbol, they are
built with as many features as possible, and all suppliers charge a
premium for the smaller devices because they know it is to be integrated
into a "luxury" device with high price markup.

But when you get industries to cooperate on a humanitarian project, I
suspect that all those artificial markups go away and those small
components all of a sudden become quite affordable.

Also, those OLPC laptops use much older LCD screens (not even sure of
they are colour). This means that pproducing them doesn't use up
production lines dedicated to hgh value LCD screens. And it also
explains a big cost difference between those laptops and "business"
laptops that use state of the art LCD displays.

So, If Digital existed today and decided to participate in that project,
I am sure they could build a very low cost vax or even alpha. Could the
alpha be build/configured to be used as a 32 bit machine ? (aka:
requires far less RAM to run and its executables would be smaller) ?
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: One Laptop per Child
    ... The OLPC machines are designed to be inexpensive and robust. ... be possible today to build some cheap machine that can run VMS. ... Those laptops could be using vaxes from 2 generations back, ... Real laptops today cost a lot because, as a status symbol, they are ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: OT:WiMax for Bob
    ... The larger issue is the desirability of embedding wireless interfaces. ... It has to cost somebody something. ... devices is much shorter than that of laptops. ... The embedded module won't preclude upgrade via dongle if you want... ...
    (rec.audio.opinion)
  • Re: OT:WiMax for Bob
    ... The larger issue is the desirability of embedding wireless interfaces. ... It has to cost somebody something. ... shorter than that of laptops. ... The embedded module won't preclude upgrade via dongle if you want... ...
    (rec.audio.opinion)
  • Re: OT: One Laptop per Child
    ... laptops, and they still are having problems fitting the bloat that is ... Windows onto those cards. ... fit VMS on every other possible hardware combination. ... likely real cost from this. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
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