While One Laptop Per Child is promoting a two-screen mock-up as the next generation XO laptop, Pixel Qi - Mary Lou Jepsen's company founded to commercialize the XO screen - is showing off the real XO-2, here and now: netbooks with the XO's dual mode screen, dubbed the 3qi:
XO-2: 3qi screen in Aspire One netbook
I've had many requests for a peak at the 3qi screen outdoors: I took the snapshot below yesterday, on my iphone (sorry, it's just not a great camera) outside in the hot tropical sun. The laptop is on top of a shrub. Apologies for the glare from the metal bezel of the screen; this will of course be covered up in a real product. Nonetheless, we think its a stunning screen.
She also has stunning photos of the screen in its dual modes, full color saturation with backlight on, and an epaper mode with backlight off.
This to me is the real XO-2. The netbook craze that the XO-1's cheap price and small form factor spawned, now infused with commercialized versions of the technologies that the XO-1 pioneered. We already have customized Open Source operating systems & user interfaces that can be traced to the thought of using Sugar instead of XP.
Next, I hope to see mesh networking and power management perfected in consumer products, with form factors increasing in durability and ruggedness.Then the XO-inspired technology revolution will be complete.
Now about that education revolution...
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I don't see mesh networking coming through anytime soon.
Wow, that looks pretty impressive! A nicely engineered netbook (think Samsung N110) with such a screen would certainly be hard to resist... ;-)
I agree that the screen was a major advancement in the XO. Its bw resolution (1200*900) is still unique among netbooks and it is a good feature that the color saturated mode works at this resolution (although not very crisp due to the conversion).
However:
1) I find that the wifi capability of the XO is actually weaker than normal laptops. I have several normal laptops of the about the same age as the XO and all of them perform better especially in connection stability. Even with the latest firmware it drops connections much more frequently. Several other people reported this. The mesh networking feature is nice.
2) Power management of the XO is nothing special (never mind the promises). In fact it is weaker than normal laptops because it doesn't have a hibernate function (saving state to disk then power off), only suspend to ram. Its suspend state discharge rate is comparable to other laptops. Normally, you get 3.5 hours of active work from the XO and that is behind of the times now because some netbooks and laptops offer much more (you can buy 6-8 hour batteries to a lot of net/notebooks.
I still like the XO but I wish it was a bit more powerful and have more memory for running typical software like OpenOffice. The XO-1.5 will fix that but I don't think it will become successful with the current OLPC sales model.
I would definitely buy a 12" Pixel-Qi replacement screen for my Toshiba tablet if such product gets developed and becomes available.
Cool. I wonder what the resolution is. It looks higher than the standard 1024x600 of that sized Netbook. It would be interesting if this would be salable in commercial products and help with matters like battery life and cost. Full power the LCD monitor in my 7" netbook uses 2W, which if you could use e-reader mode would be great outside. It would also help drive down unit costs.
We already have customized Open Source operating systems & user interfaces that can be traced to the thought of using Sugar instead of XP.
Get over yourself. When the first modern consumer netbook, the Asus 701 Eee was released, Microsoft did not have a competitive OEM product. XP OEM was ready to be shelved (and pricey compared to a $400 computer). However a good portion of the owners manual is dedicated to installing Windows XP.
With a 4GB SSD it was physically impossible to install Vista, and to push expensive Vista business just to get XP downgrades would be absurd (not to mention it still doesn't meet the Vista Business requirements).
So Microsoft in a tizzy to prevent losing market share started dumping XP home licenses for $30 each with a promise to extend the shelf life. Which is what I believe Asus was after to begin with. Now XP market share on Netbooks is in excess of 90% (and returns are down, and users seem happy to be able to use their 'normal' applications).
Now the small SSD powered machines are being replaced with larger hard drive units, which allow the machines to more than meet the Vista requirements (and from user reports run Vista reasonably well, even with 1GB RAM). Yet OEMs are still equipping most Netbooks with XP.
Microsoft is working on Windows 7 which by all accounts runs well on low end computers, yet it is still impossible to do a proper installation on a 4GB SSD. So the idea of pushing the bottom end of computers seem to be fading.
Asus used Xandros which worked fine if you didn't want to play with it (used the default applications), but had antique repos if you wanted to run modern software, reveling the mess known as software installation in Linux. MSI (I think) reported far higher return rates for Linux equipped Netbooks than Windows ones.
Dell was the only one who got it right by using a mainstream distro like Ubuntu. Further evidenced by the number of Ubuntu spin-offs designed exclusively for netbooks, and on eeeuser.com the number of users running a Ubuntu based installation compared to Xandros.
Now about that education revolution...
Indeed
@John Smith
I believe Linux is going to stay for netbooks and will gradually get larger and larger market share. Here is why:
The new, ARM based netbooks will have no Windows based competition. Windows 7 will not run on ARM for a while and Windows CE/Mobile is usually considered unfit for this category (and cannot run standard x86 Windows software on ARM anyway). Linux generally runs well on ARM and specialized distros (like Ubuntu/ARM) are well on the way for this segment. Typical Linux apps are usually very easy to port to ARM (mostly a simple recompilation).
From now on Linux will be a weapon in the hands of OEM netbook producers against Microsoft. Either Microsoft gives Windows OEM licences dead-cheap or the OEM will put the Linux version in the spotlight and the Windows version will sell less. This is already a trend, see the new HP netbook (Mi) for which the Linux version is now $30 cheaper than the Windows version and sports bigger hard disk and available with larger memory options (XP netbook OEM licence limits memory to 1 Gbyte or so).
Microsoft will either loose a lot of income compared to the past or Linux share will go up (which means the same on the long term).
Microsoft will have a hard time deciding which is the worse and there is no really good choice between those two. Moreover, the good-old "buy-the-opponent-and-kill-its-company" way is also closed now since Linux is owned by nobody in specific and is developed/sold/supported by an immense amount of people and companies.
Yes Linux can be a weapon in the hands of the OEMs, but if you look at the history, Asus etc only did it to squeeze Windows licences out of Microsoft.
The marketshare of Linux in netbooks is going DOWN with time, not up.
Also, while ARM does have major prospects in the field of OLPC, I'm not so sure for "normal customers". One of the reasons Netbooks are popular isn't just because they are small computers, but because they are small computers that can run a desktop operating system. Compare how popular x86 netbooks are against PocketPC, Psion netbook, Nokia tablets, iPod touch, and other options. The x86 netbooks are popular because of the software support.
So yes, Ubuntu is going to release an ARM version. Now while Ubuntu is a step forward as far as Linux usability, it still isn't a walk in the park. Releases are abandoned within 6 months requiring painful upgrades for users, wifi support breaks randomly with new downloads. Even Intel graphics, which have vendor open source drivers, perform far worse in 9.04 than previous versions. Linux is far from being polished enough for the appliance like application they are searching for in Netbooks, and at least with Windows, although not appliance like, is at least familiar and can run normal applications with ease.
Also, ARM development of Adobe flash is trailing significantly from x86 (and generally flash on Linux is just a trainwreck). Personally I hate Flash, but it is a part of "teh interwebs", and without proper support, a device loses value as a web browser.
@ John Smith:
"Xandros which worked fine if you didn't want to play with it"
This was the fault of Asus. Dell did much better by using Ubuntu, which has been a continuing success.
"but had antique repos if you wanted to run modern software"
Again, Asus's fault for not choosing a better distribution. And Xandros's fault for not updating their repositories.
"reveling the mess known as software installation in Linux"
Not sure what this means. Package Management under GNU/Linux is much better under popular Linux distributions than wither Windows or Mac.
"MSI (I think) reported far higher return rates for Linux equipped Netbooks than Windows ones"
MSI failed to provide users with a ready to use system "out of the box". Users expect it to "just work" when they buy it. Again, this is not the fault of any Linux distribution (though I also think their choice of distributions was not the best either), it is MSI's fault. Asus and Dell have not reported higher returns of Linux netbooks over Windows ones.
"Ubuntu... still isn't a walk in the park"
It is if its done right. And that's the OEM's job. We provide Ubuntu to our customers, we do it right, that's our job, and our customers are very happy.
"Releases are abandoned within 6 months requiring painful upgrades for users"
Most users do not upgrade every 6 months, and the release is not "abandoned" either. And LTS releases are supported for much longer. And for users who do come to us asking about upgrades because they lack experience or are just too scared to try it, we upgrade them, and people love this kind of service.
"wifi support breaks randomly with new downloads"
Are you talking about new distro releases ? We have not had that problem over multiple releases, except with Kubuntu, but we resolved that.
"Intel graphics, which have vendor open source drivers, perform far worse in 9.04 than previous versions"
I have seen this. We have had only one user who might have been affected by this, but for what she used her computer for it didn't matter. When it is fixed (and it will be) she'll get it in her updates and she'll see the performance improvement, a nice surprise that will be.
"Linux is far from being polished enough for the appliance like application they are searching for in Netbooks"
Again, this really depends on the OEM. For the type of ARM based 'appliances' were talking about here, we are looking at Ubuntu and its variants and Android. And things are looking good. Furthermore, we can't use Apple's OS, and Microsoft does not currently offer anything on ARM worth considering.
With regard to Flash, talk to Adobe about that...
This was the fault of Asus. Dell did much better by using Ubuntu, which has been a continuing success.
Which is a standard distribution. So much for the comment in the original article:
customized Open Source operating systems & user interfaces that can be traced to the thought of using Sugar instead of XP
Package Management under GNU/Linux is much better under popular Linux distributions than wither Windows or Mac.
Package management is great... if you have a modern distro release. By comparison a surprising amount of new software still works on Windows 2000 which is 9 years old, and on OS X tiger 10.4 which is a couple years old. By comparison when I installed Ubuntu 7.10 in January 2008, in short order it was succedded by 8.04 and promptly I was unable to upgrade to new versions of software (Open office 3, Firefox 3, Wine 1.0) without following a complex manual install process. They were not in any official backport repo. By comparison Open Office 3 and Firefox 3 will install on Mac OS Tiger and Windows 2000.
Most users do not upgrade every 6 months, and the release is not "abandoned" either. And LTS releases are supported for much longer. And for users who do come to us asking about upgrades because they lack experience or are just too scared to try it, we upgrade them, and people love this kind of service.
As I stated above, to use new versions of popular software I either had to do manual installation of the software following a complex HOW-TO or upgrade the operating system. This happens a LOT with Ubuntu and the 6 month release sheduales mean it isn't long before you're out of date. By comparison a lot of new software will still install on fairly old versions of Windows and Mac OS without much pain. Either open the archive, or run the installer and you're done.
So users lack the experiance or are scared to upgrade. You do it for them. Now I don't know in what context you're doing this work, but think of joe user. They would think they'd have to pay Geek Squad every 6 months to upgrade the OS for them. So much for Linux being cheaper and easier to maintain.
Re: Wifi breakage. It depends on the hardware. Random adapters stop working with different upgrades.
I have seen this. We have had only one user who might have been affected by this, but for what she used her computer for it didn't matter. When it is fixed (and it will be) she'll get it in her updates and she'll see the performance improvement, a nice surprise that will be.
It affects all Intel adapters. Which interestingly enough, pretty much all netbooks have Intel 915, 950, or 500 adapters. They are all affected. They perform worse than they used to! That behaviour isn't acceptable. If you're going to rewrite the drivers, keep shipping the old drivers until the new ones are up to par with the old ones. Interestingly enough you use the old Linux advocate argument "You didn't really need that"