A new OLPC XO chipset!
Now that OLPC has a stable Sugar UI build and two rounds of hardware testing, they've decided its time to upgrade the hardware for the third round of testing, the BTest-3 Children's Machine XO platform.
And what might OLPC developers be geeking with now? Today at ShmooCon, Ivan Krstić announced that One Laptop Per Child will be trading the BTest-1/2 366Mhz AMD processor, 128MB RAM and 512 NAND flash storage for a whole XO chipset upgrade.
The OLPC XO BTest-3 hardware specs will be a AMD Geode LX-700 433Mhz .13 micron chip sipping an impressive 0.8 watts backed up with chip caching at 128KB for both L1 and L2 cache, increased RAM to 256MB and NAND flash storage of 1 Gigabyte.
The very first impact of this hardware upgrade will be a quickening of the OLPC XO boot-up. It's currently two minutes plus of operating system processing boredom torture before Sugar presents itself:
Next up, with double the RAM and flash memory, the OLPC XO now almost matches Intel's Classmate PC chipset. Intel still has a processor lead with its 900Mhz Intel Mobile processor, but no longer will its have a RAM or storage lead. Yet that 900Mhz processor will never allow the Classmate to have the battery life of the OLPC XO.Last and most interesting, the 1 Gig of memory gives future OLPC XO users double the space for photos, video, educational content of all varieties. Maybe now the Children's Machine XO really will be a Library of Alexandria.
- Geode LX-700 433Mhz.
- RAM to 256MB.
- NAND flash storage of 1 Gigabyte.
Have a look to the Linutop : www.linutop.com ...
The linutop simply isn't a laptop. Where's the HiRes screen? Although it shares the basic configs with the OLPC, you can hardly consider it as a competitor... consider it cost twice the OLPC itself.
I think the Linutop serves a purpose, maybe as a thin client with screen and keyboard. Its price point would be in that region.
As a desktop replacement its out of the ballpark. As a laptop replacement is not even close.
The second hand market is kicking the guts out of any low price product so I dont see how the Linutop can compete unless people take pity and buy one to help out...
> The linutop simply isn't a laptop
You're right, but the "After-sales service is a big challenge" for a Laptop.
> Consider it cost twice the OLPC itself.
You're right : the price (for one Linutop) is 280 euro and you have to buy a screen and a keybord, but this is the price for a single unit. The price for 1 million unit, including screen and keyboard might lower ...