Re: OT: One Laptop per Child

In article <d6b52$475aa868$cef8887a$31315@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
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).

As does the ASUS EeePC. Mine has 4GB. You can install XP on it with no
problem although it is a little cramped. Of course, the next version is
going to come out with 8GB so XP will be very doable. One can only hope
people have enough sense to not do it.


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.

Yeah, but what chance would it have being unleashed on the masses (and
inparticular, un-educated and mostly semi-literate masses who are the
primary target for this project) without a really good GUI and point-
and-click applications?


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.

Most organizations like this don't pay taxes so there is no additional
tax break because of what they are doing. The big savings is in not
needing to make a profit to please your stockholders. But then, that
hasn't detered HP from flushing a profit center like VMS down the toilet.


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.

And running what?


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.

Then why was mine less than $400?


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.

Industries aren't intersted in "humanitarian projects" they are interested
in making profits. If they don't, they don't remain industries for very
long.


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.

Mine has a very nice collor display, thank you. I doubt there is any
savings today in not having color. Monochrome screens would have to
be specially made as no one is using them. Not even my telephone. This
would likely make them more expensive than color.


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) ?

Not even worth thinkin about......

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
.

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