Impact Of $100 Laptops On Portable Gaming And Emulation Scene?

[Dubya']

The "$100 laptop" looks like it would be fairly promising for portable gamers:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification

It's OS is Red Hat Linux w/X Windows.

I suspect that, unless something is done to artificially limit the distribution and sales of these, they might have a major negative impact on portable game system hardware sales. Comments?

 

[Nova]

Ugh, not if that's a rubber keyboard I see...

 

[nickspoon]

Actually, they've recently been upgraded so they can run Windows XP. For some reason. So now they cost $175. Supposedly they'll still ship with stripped-down Fedora though.

I've actually tried one of these for a bit - one of the lecturers at the IET had one. It's pretty nice to use, and the keyboard isn't too bad.

 

[___]

these will not be offered for sale anywhere. they are part of the project OLPC (one laptop per child) which is an educational charity that will distribute these babies to 3rd world country governments and ngos. They are designed for educational purposes, you can read, work, learn and program on them. they do however not feature a harddrive and are limited in their commercial use. noone will be able to exploit them easily, as they are supposed to be used by children. as far as I know, they will be locked with a fixed serial number that will be associated to the photo of the user/owner.

EDIT: Okay, it seems that I am misinformed. Please correct me... I just read an article about these exact models in the CT magazine...

EDIT2: OLPC webpage

 

[Nova]

I've actually tried one of these for a bit - one of the lecturers at the IET had one. It's pretty nice to use, and the keyboard isn't too bad.

Not for practical uses, no, but for things like counter strike, it'd be near useless...

 

[___]

yeah, i think they shouldn't be used for gaming. I think the purpose the OLPC organization has developed them is pretty cool and it should stay like that.

 

[Dubya']

these will not be offered for sale anywhere.

"The OLPC project has stated that a consumer version of the XO laptop is not planned. However, Quanta will be offering machines very similar to the XO machine on the open market."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Machine

 

[Dubya']

yeah, i think they shouldn't be used for gaming. I think the purpose the OLPC organization has developed them is pretty cool and it should stay like that.

"Economy of scale" characterizes a production process in which an increase in the quantity produced causes a decrease in the long run average cost of each unit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_scale

So, in other words, by buying one, you'd be doing the kiddies a favor because the per unit price drops in accordance with the number made. They will crank these things out like Legos. The only reason that they wouldn't make them generally available would be to protect their high-markup products. And, if they DON'T make them generally available, the Chinese will simply clone them to sell at the same price or lower.

I think that there will be _all kinds_ of fantastic non-educational uses for these, including portable gaming. And the flash memory limitation mentioned here will be hacked around overnight via the laptop's USB ports. The laptop also has an internal SD card slot that hacker mods would easily make external.

I've actually tried one of these for a bit - one of the lecturers at the IET had one. It's pretty nice to use, and the keyboard isn't too bad.

Not for practical uses, no, but for things like counter strike, it'd be near useless...


By looking at the hardware specs I linked to above, if you can get full-speed emulation on the GP2X, you should be able to do the same on this machine.

 

[Dubya']

And here's a photo of it folded into what they call "e-book mode" but I'll call "gamer mode":

 

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Ouch, you can SEE the straining on those wrists.
Blue veins.

 

[purple_goat]

err when can I buy one/ something like it?

 

[sam fisher]

Ouch, you can SEE the straining on those wrists.
Blue veins.

it weighs 1.5 kilos and the blue blood vessels aren't neccasaril a sign of stress.

 

[___]

err when can I buy one/ something like it?

No offense but: please, purple goat, just once, read the flipping thread before posting and asking dumb questions! It's not like it's 15 pages long... all the magic answers are in here... <_<

 

[purple_goat]

I read it, it said the weren't selling them
/ something like it?
*ahem*

 

[sensible GP32]

sigh.

 

[sam fisher]

Slightly off topic, but I have an asus mobo and I can't install any linux distros. They just can't boot, something related to the stupid ATI northbridge Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Jarska333]

"Slightly" offtopic?


Anyways, I hope they make different colors, green is kinda meh. That would be neat for reading stuff and perhaps watching movies. I trust it has sound...

 

[shinneri]

Anyways, I hope they make different colors, green is kinda meh. That would be neat for reading stuff and perhaps watching movies. I trust it has sound...

Doubtful

From the site:
QUOTE
In part, the goal is to strongly appeal to XO's intended users; but the machine's distinctive appearance is also meant to discourage gray-market traffic.

Basically make it ugly so people -- outside of children, who will think it looks good -- will not want one.


Though I like the idea of this OLPC thing, this is not a threat to GP2X even a tiny bit.

 

[sam fisher]

About my offtopic thing, I made ubuntu fiesty work, I think.

 

[purple_goat]

About my offtopic thing, I made ubuntu fiesty work, I think.

how? (I have been having trouble too)