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Uruguayan here, I remember seeing these everywhere. My wife used to work for the organization that was in charge of the project of getting one laptop to every child. It was a revolution, but also a challenge. Children were playing with the laptops in the rain, some teachers at the beginning didn't want to have anything to do with any computer, and getting replacement parts to thousands of computers, some of them in the middle of nowhere was a logistics nightmware. In some schools it was the reason that internet (and even electrical power) was installed. The government organization in charge of getting the computers and education software (called Ceibal) still exists and operates today, but with "regular" Windows computers. Even a friend of mine who used to work for this organization was in charge of selling the consulting to other countries to do the same. It was a success and a revolution here in Uruguay.
Me being born in South America am always skeptical about governments doing stuff. How corrupt was this whole thing in Uruguay? Had this happened in my country, the government would have ordered it, 10% of them would have gotten to children, the other 90% would have been sold to whoever paid the most and the money pocketed by the employees of whatever entity ordered the laptops.
I admire that your government pulled that off, I remember "computerization" of the UK schools in the 1980s and 1990s and it was a mess, even under pretty strong and (relatively) competent government.
My dad got me one of these laptops through the donation program when I was about 2 or 3. I showed this video to him, and he informed me that my laptop was one of the first models made. I still have that laptop to this day, and it was what started my interest in all things tech. Thanks, Dad. What an awesome gift.
It was usual UN money laundering scheme . 90% goes into deep pockets, only 10% actually benefits someone. Other than that, completely unnecessary product. There were tons of used hardware shipped to Africa, that actually helped that continent.
Sometimes you have to be bold (and willing to fail) to make any success at all. OLPC may not have been the source they wanted to be, but they were a catalyst, and I’m glad that we have low-power portable devices focused on education regularly in the hands of children all over the world. You can talk about food and water issues, war, etc., and those are real problems that need solving; but the way to start that is through better education. Increase the number of people with a wide knowledge base and the ability to put that to practical use, and then empower them to do more. Education is a force-multiplier.
Even then, they could have simply refurbished old laptops for less money. Today that is even more true because you can get a 10 year old laptop for little to no money. Corporations will often donate old machines because it is the cheapest way to dispose of them. You really just have to go ask the right person. It is still going to be better than any brand new, cost optimized ewaste netbook that will stop working in 3-4 years as a result of planned obsolescence when a 10 year old laptop can go for another decade or more with Linux. It keeps e waste out of landfills and reduces the carbon footprint of PC ownership when you repurpose them for a second service life.
This video took me back so many years. I am from Nicaragua, while I was in college during a semester I was part of a group of students who did volunteer work for the Zamora Teran foundation for social credits. We'd go to different schools in my town that were part of a program that provided students with XO laptops. We'd check the state of each laptop and give maintenance if it was necessary. This was probably 10 years ago.
Making ewaste that will be obsolete in 3 years is socially irresponsible when perfectly good 10 year old business laptops are ending up in landfills. Low cost student laptops are an environmentally damaging scam.
Thanks for sharing a first hand account! I remember seeing these when I was in Nicaragua years ago working with a school near Granada! I loved visiting Nicaragua, I also spent a lot of time up in the small town of San Jose de Cusmapa working with the Fabretto Foundation.
That sound at the beginning made me feel nostalgic, I am Uruguayan, at that time I was a child from a rural school, It was almost my first access to a computer and the Internet, my contact with Doom, I think thanks to this I now like computers, crazy! I remember him a lot, In my country this slow computer is fondly remembered :)
When I was watching the video I was thinking, can this thing play Doom? I'm really glad to hear it can. I really loved Doom as a kid, so it's great to know these laptops let these kids experience it too
Amazing! I love hearing from someone who benefited from this project. It was one that I was very vocal about in the early times when it was still just a proposal.
Generally a very fair history of our efforts and a nice description of Sugar. Just want to include a tip of the hat to Mark Foster, who was the one responsible for the bulk of the hardware and industrial design innovations of the XO 1. (John Watlington took over for Mark on the subsequent models.)
How does this comment not have way more interaction? HEY TH-cam VIEWERS, WE LITERALLY HAVE ONE OF THE CREATORS AND NOBODY SEEM TO CARE? You should make some TH-cam videos that talk about the process of developing this!
Hello sir, I just wanna say that I really love and appreciate everything you guys did and the impact you had on the world and children in so many places, hats off to you
@@rondobrondo We're working on making some videos. Anyone interested in helping in our future endeavors may find information how on our website and wiki. Come join our community!
I don't think people who grew up after the early 2000s understand how crazy it was at the time for laptops to even be targeting prices that low. We were barely more than a decade past computers costing thousands, not hundreds, of dollars. The eee PC blew my mind the first time I saw it. The OLPC team absolutely deserves partial credit for changing society's mindset about how much a laptop should cost and what it needs to be able to do.
yea in the 90s a lot of people had a pc but the cheapest laptop was 10x more expensive and the screens were very bad and the trackpad wasn't a thing yet
I was actually one of the kids who got one of this, i think my favorite thing was literally playing sim city on it all the time, I should have it in Mexico somewhere at my house.
I first played Sim City on a windows vista flip phone with a keyboard. I was only like 7 and don't remember the name of it, but LGR has a video on it. I had the high end version that my dad gave me.
@@kupokinzyt I first played Sim City on our Schools brand new McIntosh Computers in 1992. I only owned a Sega Genesis Sega/CD at the time and playing a game with real High Rez graphics blew my mind. My brother and I immediately bought a SNES and Sim City which while missing the high rez graphics was still just as fun.
Especially considering Compaq (later hp like the tx 1000 side note those things are a pain to repair) made expensive under Powered tablet pcs that did that
10:12 A small note, the OLPC actually belonged to Homestar. Strong Bad was a strong devotee to the Compy/Lappy series. And you can't forget the Cheat with his iMac.
The funniest thing about humanity is that there are some of us who always likes to criticize and complaint about others who wants to do anything for the unfortunate ones but those who complains and criticize are often the ones who don't want to lift a finger and help. Sure the $100 laptop didn't become as successful as everyone hoped it would but the effect it made and the legacy it left is something the original founders can be proud of. I believe it was an eye opener for everyone that technology can be made really cheap and accessible to everyone and even to this day, the competition to deliver the cheapest gadget is still a raging warzone.
You don’t even have to go very far. Just look at comment replies right here. Many people from underdeveloped countries saying how integral OLPC was in their childhood and people are just berating them for accepting a “cheap laptop”
Thank you for this. This was the first charity I ever donated to with my own money. I never found out if they actually accomplished anything until now.
You got scammed. That is all a brand new low cost student laptop will ever be - a scam. They didn't accomplish much - just enough to keep from going to prison for fraud. They could have gone around soliciting major corporations for old hardware donations and made it an effort to refurbish and repurpose old business laptops for student use. But they wouldn't have got rich doing that. And I guarantee the guy who started it got his, regardless of how the company ended up.
@@Lurch-Bot > They could have gone around soliciting major corporations for old hardware donations and made it an effort to refurbish and repurpose old business laptops sure in current year, but laptops only got good in the 2000s because they became more power efficient without sacrificing performance and as ken repeated multiple times in this video, they live in places that potentially dont have electricity + workstation laptops were big heavy and bulky, a terrible thing if this is a laptop for kids. I think they had no choice but to design their own laptop
@@nohs8776 Exactly; back then flash storage was still very expensive ( I remember paying $35 for an 8GB thumbdrive), and to get decent capacity meant a power hungry laptop HDD, which also meant designing the laptop's internals around a 2.5" drive as well as reduced durability.
@@Lurch-Botjust read the comments on this video, many people are talking about how they used the laptops in many different countries. I donated two laptops and I don't regret it at all.
@@Lurch-Bot jesus christ you must be fun to hang out with. Many people in THIS comment section were talking about how fondly they remembered the computer. Even IF some funds were misused, SO much good was done, SO much was done to modernize rural towns that saying its a "scam" is genuinly braindead.
I remember around this time that there was a lot of derision because people assumed it was going to be a regular PC with gaming capabilities and features on par with the most expensive and feature-rich PC (or at the very least part of the UMPC trend) and when it didn't turn out that way they judged it on those merits alone completely ignoring the use-case and asking why they didn't just raid the local Goodwill and refurbish older laptops. A suspicious amount of people from the Glorious PC Master Race side of things hated this idea and refused to give it any chance. Looking back on it of course we soberly all see it for what it actually was. But back then I couldn't understand or believe the amount of hate it got.
There were no merits. It was usual UN money laundering scheme : 90% of money is "greasing the wheels" and lining the pockets, only 10% goes to poor. And it did not help anyone, as Africa was already getting tons of used and obsolete hardware for cheap, which increased digital literacy.
Student laptops are always ewaste scams with planned obsolescence built in and there are plenty of older laptops that corporations just throw away which could be repurposed and perform better than that brand new cost-neutered device. You don't have to raid a Goodwill; you just have to talk to the right people in major corporations. Donating is the cheapest way to get rid of old hardware to them because they don't have to pay someone to take it away and they can write it off as a charitable donation. The real problem is a dearth of human beings willing to help others. There are still old business laptops going into landfills because people like you want the easy solution. People like you encourage literal scammers to take advantage of educational systems around the world. You're not going to go around cold calling corporate IT managers to find free laptops...
Ken, what a well-researched, balanced documentary. I’ve been a subscriber for years now and while you’ve always been entertaining, this channel has been on fire lately, with thoughtful, longform content. As difficult as it has been lately for creators on this platform, I’m so grateful that we still have your channel and that it keeps improving and evolving.
I still have the XO that I got through the give one get one promotion. About 99 percent of my usage has been the speaking function. Designed for a child but perfect for an easily-amused adult.
My college entrepreneurship professor picked up one of the original OLPCs when the Give 1 Get 1 program was live. He was always excited to try the latest gadgets, so it was neat to see one in person. It was underpowered but ambitious, and I always appreciated their mission.
Uruguayan here. That little PC is the whole reason we have a videogame industry here, since the first gamestudios were goverment initiatives to get content to the XOs. Until this day the realationship between goverment and videogame industry is really strong and I got the money to fund my gamestudio tks to that.
Even if it wasn't able to be everything it's creators hoped--what an amazing bit of engineering. It's obvious so much care and thought was put into even the smallest elements, and that is such a neat thing to see.
I imagine being able to edit the source code of the desktop while the desktop was running was inspired by Smalltalk which had similar goals of being a fully-programmable user environment in addition to a programming language. Funnily enough, Alan Kay, the creator of Smalltalk, envisioned a device called a Dynabook which would be very similar to the OLPC.
I actually received one of those laptops myself in 2009, under Uruguay's "Plan Ceibal". The government eventually replaced them with newer machines.. but I so want to get my hands on one now.
I think the greatest achievement of Asus EeePC is creating a big FOMO around netbooks, then drawing every manufacturers big and small into it. I think a lot of them lose quite a bit of money at the end of the FOMO rush. IMHO this is the pro-gamer move. No one else can really stick it to their competitors like that...
I think what the FOMO pretenders forgot to do was tailor the os and experience to the hardware. I remember being so damn disappointed with the out of the box experience of a umpc I got because Vista was on it and absolutely unusable in its default state. I later learned this was due to a last minute issue that had nothing to do with the pc manufacturer and an issue between Intel and a commissioned company that fell through basically moments before the project went into production. That said, I don't doubt the lack of customized os experiences on netbooks probably made them feel like wannabe computers, like those old toy 2 line lcd computers in the toy section of department stores in the 90s...i.e. something a regular person wouldn't take seriously by looking at it for 3 seconds.
We're years later and many people still opt for the 13.3" Ultrabooks despite price to performance lagging sometimes two generations behind. Will always be an appeal for truly portable, long battery life.
@@Sirfrummel it is great if it is equipped reasonably and used with the programs that could run well with the resource available. But a lot of turn are ruined by marketing and penny pinchers... Like marketing want to put Vista on it. Like penny pinchers want to put only enough RAM to boot and that's it.
Something I wish you would've talked about is the weird bug on the early models where if the battery was absolutely drained, it just....bricked the computer. Now, to get around that, you have to do some weird semi-re-programming of the board with homemade wire jumpers. Fun!
I was given an OX-1 which had succumbed to that problem. If the RTC battery died, the security built into the laptop rendered it unusable. It wasn't that difficult to fix, but it did require getting an FTDI serial and connecting to the header on the dismantled XO-1 to get it going. It didn't help that this also meant the rechargeable battery was completely drained too. I rebuilt mine after this. Updated the base plate for the new mouse pad, and got a more durable battery for it which can handle deep discharges better. Seeing that it is powered on next to me, I guess that's working.
@@R.B. ahh yep, that’s the process. I have a tab bookmarked somewhere that details how to fix it. I actually have 5 XO-1 units and batts- 2 working with ‘functional’ batteries, one functioning unit but with a dead battery, one essentially ‘parts’ machine with a dead battery, and I also have a new in box (unsealed, but everything is still in plastic and pristine) XO-1 with a good battery. Every so often I get them out and charge and discharge the batteries that work. Fun fact, I actually have the pull-cord battery charger he mentioned in the video!
In a future-looking move, the batteries are Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4/LFP), a battery chemistry that is only now being popularized in electric cars and home energy storage. It is inherently safer, has a longer service life and less degradation over time.
OLPC can be served by giving older business laptops a second life. Any and all efforts to produce a brand new low cost student laptop are scams of the worst kind.
I bought one of those (well two, one for some student some place) and enjoyed the experience and the innovation. My young kids at the time enjoyed playing around with it. The biggest issues were fairly pokey software and a screen that was pretty hard to see, under indoor conditions, if i am recalling it correctly
Great video, thanks for that Ken! Genuinely moved to tears at the end, what a fabulous idea from some brilliant people, especially Seymour. Good to read in the comments too about people that had one of these as a kid, and how it's changed their lives... Things that happen across the globe are generally all doom and gloom, but it's nice to know there are good things being done by good people. 👍🏻
The most surprising thing from this video is that Steve Jobs offered OSX since he was so fast to kill off clones.... not to mention the fact that would put the OS on a budget/low end device instead of "premium".
there was the eMac that was a low spec and low end version of the G4 used in schools and classrooms that looked like a modern G3 imac but still using a CRT.
@@valley_robot Narcissists like Steve will fake being good, especially in public, to make themselves look good and feed their ego. There's a reason that scumbag is in an unmarked grave. Read his daughter's book. Yeah, the daughter he denied existed for years, and then when he acknowledged her, treated her like shit. Like he did his staff. The XO thing was just more publicity for him and Apple.
7:09 - When you mentioned the Cingular logo, my brain immediately heard the Cingular ringtone. I joined Cingular about a month before the merger with AT&T was finalized, and only because AT&T wanted a $2,000 deposit and Cingular didn't. 🤣
So mate, this on toime, I tried to make a laptop for children, that was supposed to cost loike 100 freedom eagles, but then they had these hardware problems, and people stopped buyin' 'em, and I couldn't compete with the Ee pee cee, and yeah, can I borrow some money?
And I spent $600 on a Flex 5 14 and $150 on an Orange Pi 5+🤦♂ I must be an idiot, right? Or maybe that $99 laptop is already woefully obsolete, just like the Raspberry Pi. The RP5 should have launched a couple of years ago but their lackadaisical attitude and overconfidence meant they couldn't pull it together. And they still can't, with backorder times from official retailers running to several months. The RP5 only has 8GB RAM max. OP5+ I got has 16GB and there is a 32GB model. The RP5 has 4 cores. All OP5 models have eight. The RP5 has no NPU...in 2024🤦♂ To add one, you need a hat and a Coral TPU, which only has 2/3 the performance of the one integrated into the RK3588(S). The OP5+ has a Wi-fi card slot that will happily accept a Coral A+E key TPU and then you have 10TOPS...on a SBC. Could even have 14TOPS if you stick a TPU in the M.2 slot that is on the board and running at 4x as opposed to the RP5's 1x. That's so meta. You can only get one TPU on a RP5 so 4TOPS max atm and I doubt the official software supports it. The RP5 is a device for people who just want to do emulation...poorly. Otherwise, it is already obsolete on launch, just like your $99 laptop. You have a 'laptop' that runs Windows. I guarantee my 10 year old Vaio E series still has 2-3x the processing power of your $99 ewaste special. You basically bought Windows and got an ewaste netbook for free.
@@Lurch-BotI’m not saying my $100 laptop is going to win any awards. My wife needed a cheap laptop and that’s all we could afford. My point is that at the time of the OLPC project that was unthinkable. Now it’s every day.
@@Cameront9 I'm guessing it might have been an refurbished laptop? Because laptop for $99 otherwise seems impossible, cheapest brand new laptops I find are around $299.
Admirable project. Though I have come to believe lack of education is not the main problem I thought it was. To me, the internet has demonstrated that as big of a deal lack of access to knowledge and education may be, it doesn't seem to be as big as the problem of lack of willingness to reason and lack of empathy.
Access to information is useless if nobody ever taught you how to digest it properly. The best skill you can ever learn is how to self-educate. I don't know how to make a pair of cowboy boots but if I really want to make a pair tomorrow, I can.
Uruguayan here as well. I received one of these laptops as a child, they were great, I have many great memories using them, for fun and to learn! They are one of the main reasons I became so invested on computers, and after, programming, which is something I do now as a job and I love it. I would have a really hard time getting a PC on the situation I had back as a kid... I pretty much discovered internet and computers from having one. I remember there were even some more XO's which came around at that time, there was one for high school students which was blue instead of green, and the keyboard was excellent! Thank you for unveiling the story behind the people who made it possible.
I found an OLPC 1.5 at a thrift store for $6.50, and it was an interesting little laptop, i love that dual mode LCD, its easily repairable (although parts are hard to get), but one thing that stood out to me the most was that for repairability it kept spare screws in its handle area, which came in handy as i lose a lot of screws lol.
10:12 Ackchuyally, that was Homestar's computer, Strong Bad's computer at the time was the Lappy 486, based on a horribly outdated 486 laptop from the 90s. Strong Bad is known for using horribly outdated technology. The screenshot you're showing is from sbemail 200 "email thunder" and it even shows Homestar at the computer.
I loved how the whole OLPC project led to the netbooks. I loved my EeePC. Didn't love the fact that netbooks got replaced by Chromebooks. I'll die before I buy those pieces of crap. My fave joke about OLPCs was in the webcomic "Everybody Loves Eric Raymond" (where the premise is that Eric S. Raymond, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman somehow live in the same apartment, and bizarre hijinks ensue). In one comic, Mark Shuttleworth shows up and shows off his "patented hand-cranked XML parser". ...I've had to implement an XML parser lately. It does feel like "hand cranking" is the best description of the experience. Edit: Oh! Forgot one of the coolest things, about how the OLPC project got the Unix SimCity source code opened up (as Micropolis).
There is actually still some laptops that could be considered as netbooks. While they don't share the same small form, the cheaper end of Win 10 and Win 11 laptops tend to run on eMMC or UFS, has limited storage space, bare minimum amount of RAM and are very much underperforming laptops.. And the price is actually about the same as Chromebook would be. Cheapest Chromebook I found is 319.99€ Lenovo IdeaPad Slim (82XJ000YMX) and cheapest Windows-laptop using UFS-storage is Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 (82XB002WMX) and it's 299,99€.
I gave an XO to my nephew through the Give One Get One program. It was chonky, very friendly, and I loved the dual mode screen. Thanks for telling the story.
Fun fact: the entire Sugar Desktop and the Activities were written in Python, with PyGtk for the UI. This is part of the reason why they were able to incorporate that "source code viewing" function that you mentioned. You could also edit it if you wanted to IIRC.
I remember seeing those giveaway ads as a kid on TV and it always peaked my interest despite me knowing little to nothing about computers. I'm glad to see the impact it has had on the industry and how other groups took the idea further.
I wanted an OLPC for years, I was one of those crazy kids who lugged an old full sized 90s laptop to school in the 2000s in order to get work done (it was partially a necessity because of a condition in my hands) and having something lightweight modern and affordable was a dream. Once I hit uni and was able to save my own money, one of the first things I took on was an eePC and that netbook was a constant companion for years. I miss the common availability of netbooks in that tiny form factor, they had a unique place in the market that is sadly quite vacant now with the manufacturers making equivalent devices pricing them way too high. Alongside the palmtop PC form factor they’re two styles I dearly wish they would revive.
As a american child I had no idea really about the OLPC project, but all I knew is I wanted one as a child. Hearing about the cause and people who lived through it is eye opening, definitely a revolutionary project of its time and way ahead too. Thanks for the awesome video!
I love when Netbooks are mentioned. I still have a Toshiba NB250. I let my daughter use it has her first computer (like 10+ years ago) and now it sits in the window behind me in my office. It has MX Linux on it now (might try Pop-OS on it soon). Still works great, battery even still holds a charge for a few hours.
You are the outlier for netbooks. Most people throw them away and buy another one after a couple of years because netbooks are already obsolete on launch. They are mostly a great way to bury the planet in e waste. If they are intel or AMD based, you can keep them going long after they were intended to be used. But ARM based netbooks which proliferate the landscape these days will be a doorstop in a decade. Even if you can keep them going with some obscure Linux distro, you won't want to. It is like trying to find something useful to do with a 10 year old flagship Samsung Galaxy. There isn't much you can do with them. Even for emulation, the options are limited because of the feature set of the APU. Meanwhile, a 10 year old i3 laptop will run Linux Mint or Ubuntu just fine and makes for a decent full featured basic PC.
This really is one of your best videos! The XO was in every Linux magazine in these days - but I never got the chance to try one. Amazing idea. Thank you - greetings from Austria!
I wanted one of these so much as a kid, but I was poor in a not-so-poor country, so I never got one. I still want one though. Maybe I'll buy one from ebay.
Actually was interested at XOs video lastly, and this is one is AMAZING It isnt an review, is an HISTORY, and the edition and the effort took here is just AMAZING Totally gonna watch your other vids, keep up the great job
Great video. We use the Sugar OS on the computers at our out-of-school-time program in Malden, MA (USA) because we believe they're the best for education. And we LOVE that the source code is visible at the click of a couple buttons!
I remember wanting one so bad as a kid that I saved up, only to be distraught that I couldn’t afford the give one get one. Thank you for giving me the full story it was awesome!
I always wondered what happened with this laptop. I can’t help but feel if they had put Mac OS on it like they were offered that it would have been still around today.
On the original X86 AMD Geode chip being a very low power single core CPU @ 500Mhz & 256mb of RAM(the VIA C7-M even at faster speeds was not much better per watt/CPU cycle than the AMD Geode, as I have an Everex Cloudbook being on of the first Netbooks of the 00's with one that before it died ran gOS aka good OS, and man is it sluggish), it would have ran sluggish AF compared to Fedora Linux, and Sugar GUI, or even then Gnome 2 desktop, while using more CPU clock cycles to do the same task, thus leading to worse battery life, plus Mac OS X would not have handled the screen mode switching, or the hardware power switching as well either. So a custom Linux GUI was the correct choice here for the hardware they were using. However what we can somewhat argue maybe they should have gone with an ARM Soc, but AMD was one of their backers, and produces X86 chips, plus desktop Linux was far less mature on ARM at that point compared to X86, so I get why they went that route, again but there is zero argument to be made here that they should have gone with Mac OSX Whatsoever. So yeah they had a solid well meaning idea with the OLPC project, it was just that tech was moving very fast in the 00's, and early 10's, with much much bigger players eating their lunch left, and right, and they just could not get their stuff together to make the volumes they needed to compete. Lastly we really do have to thank them for what they did for kicking the bigger guys in the rear to get their stuff together, which lowered prices to the point these days, you can get something like a fairly powerful AMD Ryzen laptop at 300 - 400 bucks, or an Android tablet from a company like ONN for less than a 100 bucks that can handle basic daily compute task without being a total slug monster, which makes computing available to more people than ever in human history.
It's true, I totally remember at the time that laptops were about $1000. I feel like this thing helped bring in cheap laptops in the commercial market. I remember the whole "netbooks" thing when it happened, back when 8 hours battery life was a biiiig deal. I like your demo of Sugar, I got to play around with an image of it in either virtualbox or vmware, I forget which...
Around 2008. There was a little know "Phone for Africa" A smart phone to retail for under $10. A consortium of some huge IT and mobile companies made this cutdown G1 like Android phone with clock speed on demand. The project folded when the big players left. People mostly turned them in to Ebook readers or Twitter status displays.
Yes, although it was always a bad idea given that these were designed to be used off grid, but off grid you don't really get any of the benefits of having a computer for school use. The commenters I see in videos covering these that have good things to say about them are mostly from places that were developing at the time, but developed enough to have some degree of networking infrastructure and electricity available on a regular basis.
I remember this, it was an exciting time. I've actually used one as an old boss gave it to my mate at the time, I was very jealous and then he sold it on without offering it to me.
Not much to add, but thank you for submitting this. It can be both refreshing and even educational to have the exposure of good intentions added into our shared humanity.
Microsoft actually developed a working version of Windows XP for the XO-1 and I've seen it running myself. But it's main purpose was to drive a wedge between OLPC and the Open Source community and not to release it to the general public.
One thing people don’t think about is just how much of a difference seemingly unimportant things like a cheap laptop can make to someone’s life. You don’t *need* one to live but I’m sure it made all of those kids so happy. Remember, these kids cherish dolls made of scraps because that’s just how little they have. Besides the enjoyment aspect, I’m sure the educational aspect had a massive impact. Underdeveloped countries aren’t less educated because they’re not smart or driven, it’s the lack of resources. They have to spend time doing work for survival instead of being a kid and learning. It’s not a frivolous endevour that “should’ve been spent on water”. Haters just gonna hate. This video made my day better. It’s so encouraging to know there ARE some people who have connections who actually care and want to help.
I remembered hearing about OLPC and its goals, but I never really learned of its ultimate development, and success or failure, once the project fell off of mainstream news media radar. Thank you for doing such a deep dive into the subject, it's quite fascinating.
I cant deny whenever linux or open source software is used in education, it brightens my day. The mission of XO is really wonderful. I also love to see schools showing children Tuxpaint for creativity, which still gets updated even in 2024. I would love to see more educational programs see expansion to linux
I love your scam busting videos, but your videos about actual technology that has done real good in the world are even better. I remember hearing about this laptop back when it was first being talked about, but eventually I'd forgotten all about it until I saw this video pop up in my subscriptions page. I very much look forward to your next video, and you keep doing what you do, I thank you.
I donated to the G1G1 and was able to get my own XO-1. I thought it was a great effort, and though the out of box functionality was limited for me, I think it had tremendous potential (I put in a bootable SD card to get a more full featured OS, and it ran pretty well with the limited hardware) There were some small missteps by the organization, but ultimately the sweeping changes in the industry is what led to it not becoming more successful. I do think that OLPC was partly responsible for those changes, so it goes to show the importance of sticking to your vision, but remembering to adapt it as the world changes.
DUDE...I've been thinking about this laptop for YEARS. I remember seeing the commercials when I was super little (prolly like 5 or 6, rough guess) and seeing the laptop flip around and desperately wanting one cause it somewhat resembelled my leapfrog at the time with the white and green color scheme. I haven't heard anything about it up until this video. All this time I wasn't sure if it was a real memory or some weird fever dream but I am so glad you mad this video, it satisfied that 5 or 6 year old child part of me :)
Ah, memories... I still have a couple of these, from doing contract work developing some activities for a foundation working for the OLPC foundation... I forget the details, but it was a fun and surprisingly easy platform to work with. The last job I had with them was developing a "photo frame" stile activity with the caveat of requiring some level of scripting and synchronization between multiple XOs, to serve as center pieces on tables for a Robin Hood foundation event. The idea was to buy these and show flowers along with notes and slides for running presentations, instead of buying actual flowers for the tables, with the plan being to donate the laptops at the end. Fun times!
Neat twist on the 2 in 1 concept, pun intended. The swivel screen makes it easy for a student to show their teacher their work. One laptop per child is an honorable goal but doing a startup to make a brand new laptop when there are old laptops out there which can be refurbished and sold for a lot less than $100 and perform way better than a completely cost compromised new device is not how to go about it. Takes care of two problems. Doesn't matter if the kids are well educated if, when they grow up, the world is completely buried in e waste laptops. Sacrificing their future with a scam to get rich on shovelware laptops isn't an honorable goal. The joypad just screams, 'hack me to emulate NES and SNES games'.
That was a great story, and a nice change from what I normally see on this channel. Very well done. It sounds like the entire OLPC project was a grand, ambitious plan that did lots of good even if they weren't able to reach their goals. They should be proud of what the accomplished.
I remember following this back in the day. And I remember that it wouldn't cost 100$ exactly and that it changed the name to XO, but basically It drifted out of my attention. So THANK you for this closure!
one thing that came out of the GFC is that the New South Wales state government in Australia spent hundreds of millions putting in wifi to all schools and distributing netbooks to middle school students... this unit was the Lenovo S10... which is a early Atom single core netbook with minimal ram, a slow hdd and Windows 7... running on a 1,024 x 600p screen...obviously this ran terrible... I think sometime in 2016 the netbook business sort of died and by then I seen stuff like the Dell Inspiron 11 which has a quad core pentium, 4gb ram 120gb ssd on a 768p screen on win10 and that ran more than acceptable.... it took a while to get there...
I’m mad that the top comment isn’t DankPods screeching “EEEEE PEEEE CEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!” Really awesome video, man. Super interesting, and a pretty impressive piece of hardware, all things considered.
I remember seeing commercials for this laptop when I was a kid as a promotion for snacks like Fruit Gushers and Fruit by the Foot where one kid runs from home and delivers one of those laptops to a kid in Africa.
I work at a science center and we had a bunch of these in a box. They were set to be recycled and I’m really glad I decided to save one. I think people really undervalue general access to technology. Glad there are people like Seymour trying to fix that.
My school had these for computer classes! I remember playing Scratch on it and making so many different games and little movies.. I kinda miss these machines
I still remember begging my mom for Gushers and other on-brand fruit snacks for the opportunity to win one of these. Cool to see this laptop still having some interest!
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Thank you, SHARGE, for sponsoring! And I hope y'all enjoy this OLPC story! 🔔Subscribe and I'll see you in the next episode soon ; )
your sponsor is a cheap skate
They're literally drop shipped AliExpress power banks. I bought one 3 months ago before I even heard of this so-called company
Better yet. Whoever thought sponsoring a TH-cam channel that literally debunks fake and scam products was a good idea should be fired.
@@Dtr146 Surely you have a link to share do you? Cause no matter how much I look around, NOTHING else comes up resembling their products.
Makes debunking videos about dropshipping grifts, pedals a dropshipping grift smh
Uruguayan here, I remember seeing these everywhere. My wife used to work for the organization that was in charge of the project of getting one laptop to every child. It was a revolution, but also a challenge. Children were playing with the laptops in the rain, some teachers at the beginning didn't want to have anything to do with any computer, and getting replacement parts to thousands of computers, some of them in the middle of nowhere was a logistics nightmware. In some schools it was the reason that internet (and even electrical power) was installed. The government organization in charge of getting the computers and education software (called Ceibal) still exists and operates today, but with "regular" Windows computers.
Even a friend of mine who used to work for this organization was in charge of selling the consulting to other countries to do the same. It was a success and a revolution here in Uruguay.
Thanks for writing! I like hearing from people who lived it.
So much effort by so many people, all for the benefit of children's education- it warms my heart so much!
Me being born in South America am always skeptical about governments doing stuff.
How corrupt was this whole thing in Uruguay? Had this happened in my country, the government would have ordered it, 10% of them would have gotten to children, the other 90% would have been sold to whoever paid the most and the money pocketed by the employees of whatever entity ordered the laptops.
@@santiagoqr1 corruption exists un Uruguay, but it's not a big thing. As far as I know it was not an issue in this project.
I admire that your government pulled that off, I remember "computerization" of the UK schools in the 1980s and 1990s and it was a mess, even under pretty strong and (relatively) competent government.
My dad got me one of these laptops through the donation program when I was about 2 or 3. I showed this video to him, and he informed me that my laptop was one of the first models made. I still have that laptop to this day, and it was what started my interest in all things tech.
Thanks, Dad. What an awesome gift.
I honestly applaud OLPC for going for a cause so bold at a time where mobile devices were still starting to develop.
It was usual UN money laundering scheme . 90% goes into deep pockets, only 10% actually benefits someone. Other than that, completely unnecessary product. There were tons of used hardware shipped to Africa, that actually helped that continent.
Plus you can upgrade the OLPC To Android 4.3 JellyBean
@@thewubmachine840 You mean downgrade. Android is for consumption, not productivity.
Sometimes you have to be bold (and willing to fail) to make any success at all. OLPC may not have been the source they wanted to be, but they were a catalyst, and I’m glad that we have low-power portable devices focused on education regularly in the hands of children all over the world. You can talk about food and water issues, war, etc., and those are real problems that need solving; but the way to start that is through better education. Increase the number of people with a wide knowledge base and the ability to put that to practical use, and then empower them to do more. Education is a force-multiplier.
Even then, they could have simply refurbished old laptops for less money. Today that is even more true because you can get a 10 year old laptop for little to no money. Corporations will often donate old machines because it is the cheapest way to dispose of them. You really just have to go ask the right person. It is still going to be better than any brand new, cost optimized ewaste netbook that will stop working in 3-4 years as a result of planned obsolescence when a 10 year old laptop can go for another decade or more with Linux. It keeps e waste out of landfills and reduces the carbon footprint of PC ownership when you repurpose them for a second service life.
This video took me back so many years. I am from Nicaragua, while I was in college during a semester I was part of a group of students who did volunteer work for the Zamora Teran foundation for social credits. We'd go to different schools in my town that were part of a program that provided students with XO laptops. We'd check the state of each laptop and give maintenance if it was necessary. This was probably 10 years ago.
Good on you, man!
You never know mate but you could have planted the seeds for a new generation of repair techs. Good work brother.
Making ewaste that will be obsolete in 3 years is socially irresponsible when perfectly good 10 year old business laptops are ending up in landfills. Low cost student laptops are an environmentally damaging scam.
@@Lurch-Bot You're a miserable person
Thanks for sharing a first hand account! I remember seeing these when I was in Nicaragua years ago working with a school near Granada! I loved visiting Nicaragua, I also spent a lot of time up in the small town of San Jose de Cusmapa working with the Fabretto Foundation.
Uruguayan here, the XO became kinda part of our culture. And as far as I know, kids are still getting their laptops.
a clean glass of water hmm Montana does not have that and they are doing just fine.🤣🤣🤣
@@SaraMorgan-ym6uewhat does this even mean?
@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue I believe Montana is a bit better off than Uruguay. No offense to either.
@@humand0969 just drink the damned dirty water💀💀
@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue Tap water in my city is better than bottled water, so I won't drink dirty water. Maybe cause I don't live in Montana.
That sound at the beginning made me feel nostalgic, I am Uruguayan, at that time I was a child from a rural school, It was almost my first access to a computer and the Internet, my contact with Doom, I think thanks to this I now like computers, crazy! I remember him a lot, In my country this slow computer is fondly remembered :)
It was back in 2007, Small video game companies created the games that marked my childhood, 2D games... Original Doom, it can run doom!
My school computer was also my first experience with Doom, except mine was a Chromebook.
When I was watching the video I was thinking, can this thing play Doom? I'm really glad to hear it can. I really loved Doom as a kid, so it's great to know these laptops let these kids experience it too
Amazing! I love hearing from someone who benefited from this project. It was one that I was very vocal about in the early times when it was still just a proposal.
Hearing one person say they benefited from this project makes it 100% worth it! I'm glad that there are people who remember them fondly :)
Generally a very fair history of our efforts and a nice description of Sugar. Just want to include a tip of the hat to Mark Foster, who was the one responsible for the bulk of the hardware and industrial design innovations of the XO 1. (John Watlington took over for Mark on the subsequent models.)
How does this comment not have way more interaction? HEY TH-cam VIEWERS, WE LITERALLY HAVE ONE OF THE CREATORS AND NOBODY SEEM TO CARE?
You should make some TH-cam videos that talk about the process of developing this!
Hello sir, I just wanna say that I really love and appreciate everything you guys did and the impact you had on the world and children in so many places, hats off to you
@@rondobrondo We're working on making some videos. Anyone interested in helping in our future endeavors may find information how on our website and wiki. Come join our community!
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for everything you've done.
Thank you
I don't think people who grew up after the early 2000s understand how crazy it was at the time for laptops to even be targeting prices that low. We were barely more than a decade past computers costing thousands, not hundreds, of dollars.
The eee PC blew my mind the first time I saw it. The OLPC team absolutely deserves partial credit for changing society's mindset about how much a laptop should cost and what it needs to be able to do.
yea in the 90s a lot of people had a pc but the cheapest laptop was 10x more expensive and the screens were very bad and the trackpad wasn't a thing yet
I was actually one of the kids who got one of this, i think my favorite thing was literally playing sim city on it all the time, I should have it in Mexico somewhere at my house.
hey that game can be educational :)
Ahh yes, it was open-sourced under a different name - Micropolis?
I first played Sim City on a windows vista flip phone with a keyboard. I was only like 7 and don't remember the name of it, but LGR has a video on it. I had the high end version that my dad gave me.
@@3rdalbum YES! omg thank you, you have no idea how much i will be playing this game from now on
@@kupokinzyt I first played Sim City on our Schools brand new McIntosh Computers in 1992. I only owned a Sega Genesis Sega/CD at the time and playing a game with real High Rez graphics blew my mind. My brother and I immediately bought a SNES and Sim City which while missing the high rez graphics was still just as fun.
The rotating screen turning it into a tablet like device was so ahead of its time.
Especially considering Compaq (later hp like the tx 1000 side note those things are a pain to repair) made expensive under Powered tablet pcs that did that
IMB/Lenovo made Thinkpads which could do the same, but they were super expensive.
10:12 A small note, the OLPC actually belonged to Homestar. Strong Bad was a strong devotee to the Compy/Lappy series. And you can't forget the Cheat with his iMac.
I'm surprised this only has 5 likes so far! =oD
Thank you I was just about to comment on this
me too lol! @@KazyEXE
I bet he got it from Marzipan. OLPC seems like the kind of thing she would donate to.
@@centurybug nah Marzipan would have carved hers out of radishes
Seymour wasn't 88, he was actually 22 since he only got a birthday every 4 years
No, he was actually 88, but could only celebrate his birthday once every four years.
@@JohnSmith-ug5cir/wooosh
@@JohnSmith-ug5ciyou don’t understand what a joke is do you ?
Happy birthday Seymour
So young 😢
The funniest thing about humanity is that there are some of us who always likes to criticize and complaint about others who wants to do anything for the unfortunate ones but those who complains and criticize are often the ones who don't want to lift a finger and help. Sure the $100 laptop didn't become as successful as everyone hoped it would but the effect it made and the legacy it left is something the original founders can be proud of. I believe it was an eye opener for everyone that technology can be made really cheap and accessible to everyone and even to this day, the competition to deliver the cheapest gadget is still a raging warzone.
You don’t even have to go very far. Just look at comment replies right here. Many people from underdeveloped countries saying how integral OLPC was in their childhood and people are just berating them for accepting a “cheap laptop”
Thank you for this. This was the first charity I ever donated to with my own money. I never found out if they actually accomplished anything until now.
You got scammed. That is all a brand new low cost student laptop will ever be - a scam. They didn't accomplish much - just enough to keep from going to prison for fraud. They could have gone around soliciting major corporations for old hardware donations and made it an effort to refurbish and repurpose old business laptops for student use. But they wouldn't have got rich doing that. And I guarantee the guy who started it got his, regardless of how the company ended up.
@@Lurch-Bot
> They could have gone around soliciting major corporations for old hardware donations and made it an effort to refurbish and repurpose old business laptops
sure in current year, but laptops only got good in the 2000s because they became more power efficient without sacrificing performance and as ken repeated multiple times in this video, they live in places that potentially dont have electricity + workstation laptops were big heavy and bulky, a terrible thing if this is a laptop for kids. I think they had no choice but to design their own laptop
@@nohs8776 Exactly; back then flash storage was still very expensive ( I remember paying $35 for an 8GB thumbdrive), and to get decent capacity meant a power hungry laptop HDD, which also meant designing the laptop's internals around a 2.5" drive as well as reduced durability.
@@Lurch-Botjust read the comments on this video, many people are talking about how they used the laptops in many different countries. I donated two laptops and I don't regret it at all.
@@Lurch-Bot jesus christ you must be fun to hang out with. Many people in THIS comment section were talking about how fondly they remembered the computer. Even IF some funds were misused, SO much good was done, SO much was done to modernize rural towns that saying its a "scam" is genuinly braindead.
I remember around this time that there was a lot of derision because people assumed it was going to be a regular PC with gaming capabilities and features on par with the most expensive and feature-rich PC (or at the very least part of the UMPC trend) and when it didn't turn out that way they judged it on those merits alone completely ignoring the use-case and asking why they didn't just raid the local Goodwill and refurbish older laptops. A suspicious amount of people from the Glorious PC Master Race side of things hated this idea and refused to give it any chance. Looking back on it of course we soberly all see it for what it actually was. But back then I couldn't understand or believe the amount of hate it got.
Forgive me for being dense, but what are you trying to imply?
Besides the fact that it was not a gaming powerhouse - but "oh no, people in a third world country are having fun...!?"
There were no merits. It was usual UN money laundering scheme : 90% of money is "greasing the wheels" and lining the pockets, only 10% goes to poor. And it did not help anyone, as Africa was already getting tons of used and obsolete hardware for cheap, which increased digital literacy.
@@aleksazunjic9672Found the PC master race peice of trash.
Student laptops are always ewaste scams with planned obsolescence built in and there are plenty of older laptops that corporations just throw away which could be repurposed and perform better than that brand new cost-neutered device. You don't have to raid a Goodwill; you just have to talk to the right people in major corporations.
Donating is the cheapest way to get rid of old hardware to them because they don't have to pay someone to take it away and they can write it off as a charitable donation. The real problem is a dearth of human beings willing to help others. There are still old business laptops going into landfills because people like you want the easy solution. People like you encourage literal scammers to take advantage of educational systems around the world. You're not going to go around cold calling corporate IT managers to find free laptops...
Ken, what a well-researched, balanced documentary. I’ve been a subscriber for years now and while you’ve always been entertaining, this channel has been on fire lately, with thoughtful, longform content. As difficult as it has been lately for creators on this platform, I’m so grateful that we still have your channel and that it keeps improving and evolving.
I still have the XO that I got through the give one get one promotion. About 99 percent of my usage has been the speaking function. Designed for a child but perfect for an easily-amused adult.
You're going to lose it when you find out you can install it on any Linux device!
My college entrepreneurship professor picked up one of the original OLPCs when the Give 1 Get 1 program was live. He was always excited to try the latest gadgets, so it was neat to see one in person. It was underpowered but ambitious, and I always appreciated their mission.
Uruguayan here. That little PC is the whole reason we have a videogame industry here, since the first gamestudios were goverment initiatives to get content to the XOs. Until this day the realationship between goverment and videogame industry is really strong and I got the money to fund my gamestudio tks to that.
Even if it wasn't able to be everything it's creators hoped--what an amazing bit of engineering. It's obvious so much care and thought was put into even the smallest elements, and that is such a neat thing to see.
I imagine being able to edit the source code of the desktop while the desktop was running was inspired by Smalltalk which had similar goals of being a fully-programmable user environment in addition to a programming language. Funnily enough, Alan Kay, the creator of Smalltalk, envisioned a device called a Dynabook which would be very similar to the OLPC.
I was one of their volunteer developers and I had two of the laptops. That was a fun time.
I actually received one of those laptops myself in 2009, under Uruguay's "Plan Ceibal". The government eventually replaced them with newer machines.. but I so want to get my hands on one now.
I think the greatest achievement of Asus EeePC is creating a big FOMO around netbooks, then drawing every manufacturers big and small into it.
I think a lot of them lose quite a bit of money at the end of the FOMO rush. IMHO this is the pro-gamer move. No one else can really stick it to their competitors like that...
I think what the FOMO pretenders forgot to do was tailor the os and experience to the hardware. I remember being so damn disappointed with the out of the box experience of a umpc I got because Vista was on it and absolutely unusable in its default state. I later learned this was due to a last minute issue that had nothing to do with the pc manufacturer and an issue between Intel and a commissioned company that fell through basically moments before the project went into production. That said, I don't doubt the lack of customized os experiences on netbooks probably made them feel like wannabe computers, like those old toy 2 line lcd computers in the toy section of department stores in the 90s...i.e. something a regular person wouldn't take seriously by looking at it for 3 seconds.
We're years later and many people still opt for the 13.3" Ultrabooks despite price to performance lagging sometimes two generations behind. Will always be an appeal for truly portable, long battery life.
Chromebooks are basically a revamped version of the netbooks. It's small, cheap, and don't require much processing power since Chrome OS is very light
I had an EeePC and absolutely loved it. It was low powered, but I did a heck of a lot on it, including even 3D modeling and some web development.
@@Sirfrummel it is great if it is equipped reasonably and used with the programs that could run well with the resource available. But a lot of turn are ruined by marketing and penny pinchers...
Like marketing want to put Vista on it.
Like penny pinchers want to put only enough RAM to boot and that's it.
Something I wish you would've talked about is the weird bug on the early models where if the battery was absolutely drained, it just....bricked the computer. Now, to get around that, you have to do some weird semi-re-programming of the board with homemade wire jumpers. Fun!
I was given an OX-1 which had succumbed to that problem. If the RTC battery died, the security built into the laptop rendered it unusable. It wasn't that difficult to fix, but it did require getting an FTDI serial and connecting to the header on the dismantled XO-1 to get it going. It didn't help that this also meant the rechargeable battery was completely drained too.
I rebuilt mine after this. Updated the base plate for the new mouse pad, and got a more durable battery for it which can handle deep discharges better.
Seeing that it is powered on next to me, I guess that's working.
@@R.B. ahh yep, that’s the process. I have a tab bookmarked somewhere that details how to fix it. I actually have 5 XO-1 units and batts- 2 working with ‘functional’ batteries, one functioning unit but with a dead battery, one essentially ‘parts’ machine with a dead battery, and I also have a new in box (unsealed, but everything is still in plastic and pristine) XO-1 with a good battery. Every so often I get them out and charge and discharge the batteries that work.
Fun fact, I actually have the pull-cord battery charger he mentioned in the video!
In a future-looking move, the batteries are Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4/LFP), a battery chemistry that is only now being popularized in electric cars and home energy storage. It is inherently safer, has a longer service life and less degradation over time.
I was going to say this. LiFe batteries also don't use cobalt which is a conflict resource.
damn, that ending genuinely got me choking for a minute. it was hard to hold back tears. what a fantastic video.
Same.
Gayyyyyyyyyyyy
I was in university at the time and I remember him coming in and speaking to our class about this. We got to demo the product too. It was pretty neat.
OLPC can be served by giving older business laptops a second life. Any and all efforts to produce a brand new low cost student laptop are scams of the worst kind.
@@Lurch-Bot Just give away your older business laptops to Nigeria, why are you still here? )))
I bought one of those (well two, one for some student some place) and enjoyed the experience and the innovation. My young kids at the time enjoyed playing around with it. The biggest issues were fairly pokey software and a screen that was pretty hard to see, under indoor conditions, if i am recalling it correctly
And it was here, on this day that i learned, after 36years on this earth. What the GR on the Alt-GR key stood for.... Go figure. :) Thanks Ken.
yeah i didn't know what it meant either.
@@KOSMOS1701A same
Great video, thanks for that Ken! Genuinely moved to tears at the end, what a fabulous idea from some brilliant people, especially Seymour. Good to read in the comments too about people that had one of these as a kid, and how it's changed their lives... Things that happen across the globe are generally all doom and gloom, but it's nice to know there are good things being done by good people. 👍🏻
Thank you for watching. I'm glad the emotion came through at the end. 😌
Homestar Runner had a OLPC. NOT Strong Bad. He used the Lappy and later the Lappier.
Don't forget the Compé
@@cllewis1 I haven't forgotten it, but it wasn't a laptop, like the Compy 386 and the Tandy.
The most surprising thing from this video is that Steve Jobs offered OSX since he was so fast to kill off clones.... not to mention the fact that would put the OS on a budget/low end device instead of "premium".
Yeah he wasn't such a bad guy after all eh, surprised me as well
there was the eMac that was a low spec and low end version of the G4 used in schools and classrooms that looked like a modern G3 imac but still using a CRT.
It was a token gesture. There's not way in hell the simple XO-1 could've run any of it. (the basic BSD kernel, sure, but the UI... not a chance)
@@jfbeamHow about "OS X on iPhone"?
@@valley_robot Narcissists like Steve will fake being good, especially in public, to make themselves look good and feed their ego. There's a reason that scumbag is in an unmarked grave. Read his daughter's book. Yeah, the daughter he denied existed for years, and then when he acknowledged her, treated her like shit. Like he did his staff. The XO thing was just more publicity for him and Apple.
7:09 - When you mentioned the Cingular logo, my brain immediately heard the Cingular ringtone. I joined Cingular about a month before the merger with AT&T was finalized, and only because AT&T wanted a $2,000 deposit and Cingular didn't. 🤣
20:40 *insert the Dank Pods Eee PC meme*
Eee Pee Cee
alternatively: *Cathode Ray Dude voice* The Eepy.
So mate, this on toime, I tried to make a laptop for children, that was supposed to cost loike 100 freedom eagles, but then they had these hardware problems, and people stopped buyin' 'em, and I couldn't compete with the Ee pee cee, and yeah, can I borrow some money?
Crazy to think that last year I walked into Best Buy and spent $99 on an Asus laptop that’s a full windows machine. Not to mention $5 Raspberry Pi’s
And I spent $600 on a Flex 5 14 and $150 on an Orange Pi 5+🤦♂ I must be an idiot, right?
Or maybe that $99 laptop is already woefully obsolete, just like the Raspberry Pi. The RP5 should have launched a couple of years ago but their lackadaisical attitude and overconfidence meant they couldn't pull it together. And they still can't, with backorder times from official retailers running to several months. The RP5 only has 8GB RAM max. OP5+ I got has 16GB and there is a 32GB model. The RP5 has 4 cores. All OP5 models have eight. The RP5 has no NPU...in 2024🤦♂ To add one, you need a hat and a Coral TPU, which only has 2/3 the performance of the one integrated into the RK3588(S). The OP5+ has a Wi-fi card slot that will happily accept a Coral A+E key TPU and then you have 10TOPS...on a SBC. Could even have 14TOPS if you stick a TPU in the M.2 slot that is on the board and running at 4x as opposed to the RP5's 1x. That's so meta. You can only get one TPU on a RP5 so 4TOPS max atm and I doubt the official software supports it. The RP5 is a device for people who just want to do emulation...poorly. Otherwise, it is already obsolete on launch, just like your $99 laptop.
You have a 'laptop' that runs Windows. I guarantee my 10 year old Vaio E series still has 2-3x the processing power of your $99 ewaste special. You basically bought Windows and got an ewaste netbook for free.
@@Lurch-Bot I ain't reading allat
@@Lurch-BotI’m not saying my $100 laptop is going to win any awards. My wife needed a cheap laptop and that’s all we could afford. My point is that at the time of the OLPC project that was unthinkable. Now it’s every day.
@@Cameront9 I'm guessing it might have been an refurbished laptop? Because laptop for $99 otherwise seems impossible, cheapest brand new laptops I find are around $299.
@@touma-san91 nope, brand new on sale at Best Buy.
Admirable project.
Though I have come to believe lack of education is not the main problem I thought it was.
To me, the internet has demonstrated that as big of a deal lack of access to knowledge and education may be, it doesn't seem to be as big as the problem of lack of willingness to reason and lack of empathy.
What was admirable in usual UN scam 😁 And in the end digital age came to Africa via used and cheap Chinese hardware.
Access to information is useless if nobody ever taught you how to digest it properly. The best skill you can ever learn is how to self-educate. I don't know how to make a pair of cowboy boots but if I really want to make a pair tomorrow, I can.
@@Lurch-Bot you have brain damage
Uruguayan here as well. I received one of these laptops as a child, they were great, I have many great memories using them, for fun and to learn! They are one of the main reasons I became so invested on computers, and after, programming, which is something I do now as a job and I love it. I would have a really hard time getting a PC on the situation I had back as a kid... I pretty much discovered internet and computers from having one.
I remember there were even some more XO's which came around at that time, there was one for high school students which was blue instead of green, and the keyboard was excellent! Thank you for unveiling the story behind the people who made it possible.
I found an OLPC 1.5 at a thrift store for $6.50, and it was an interesting little laptop, i love that dual mode LCD, its easily repairable (although parts are hard to get), but one thing that stood out to me the most was that for repairability it kept spare screws in its handle area, which came in handy as i lose a lot of screws lol.
10:12 Ackchuyally, that was Homestar's computer, Strong Bad's computer at the time was the Lappy 486, based on a horribly outdated 486 laptop from the 90s. Strong Bad is known for using horribly outdated technology. The screenshot you're showing is from sbemail 200 "email thunder" and it even shows Homestar at the computer.
"Finally, a computer for your lap"
Probably stolen from Marzipan
I loved how the whole OLPC project led to the netbooks. I loved my EeePC. Didn't love the fact that netbooks got replaced by Chromebooks. I'll die before I buy those pieces of crap.
My fave joke about OLPCs was in the webcomic "Everybody Loves Eric Raymond" (where the premise is that Eric S. Raymond, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman somehow live in the same apartment, and bizarre hijinks ensue). In one comic, Mark Shuttleworth shows up and shows off his "patented hand-cranked XML parser".
...I've had to implement an XML parser lately. It does feel like "hand cranking" is the best description of the experience.
Edit: Oh! Forgot one of the coolest things, about how the OLPC project got the Unix SimCity source code opened up (as Micropolis).
There is actually still some laptops that could be considered as netbooks. While they don't share the same small form, the cheaper end of Win 10 and Win 11 laptops tend to run on eMMC or UFS, has limited storage space, bare minimum amount of RAM and are very much underperforming laptops.. And the price is actually about the same as Chromebook would be. Cheapest Chromebook I found is 319.99€ Lenovo IdeaPad Slim (82XJ000YMX) and cheapest Windows-laptop using UFS-storage is Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 (82XB002WMX) and it's 299,99€.
I gave an XO to my nephew through the Give One Get One program. It was chonky, very friendly, and I loved the dual mode screen. Thanks for telling the story.
My first thesis was on the OLPC and its impact on education in developing countries! ❤ So glad to see these are still around!
Fun fact: the entire Sugar Desktop and the Activities were written in Python, with PyGtk for the UI. This is part of the reason why they were able to incorporate that "source code viewing" function that you mentioned. You could also edit it if you wanted to IIRC.
I was wondering that. If it would have been in C/C++ it would have been so difficult. I guess interpreted language saves the day
I remember this laptop. Bought it up in conversation a few days ago. Glad you're covering it.
Ah yes, the Shrekbook!
R\unexpecteddankpods
r/unexpecteddankpods
@@sparcie420r/foundthemobileuser
and the eeepeecee!
I believe the model pictured is actually the Shrekbook Pro.
Oh boy I remember the first time I sat in front of this exact laptop 12 years ago.
I remember seeing those giveaway ads as a kid on TV and it always peaked my interest despite me knowing little to nothing about computers. I'm glad to see the impact it has had on the industry and how other groups took the idea further.
I wanted an OLPC for years, I was one of those crazy kids who lugged an old full sized 90s laptop to school in the 2000s in order to get work done (it was partially a necessity because of a condition in my hands) and having something lightweight modern and affordable was a dream.
Once I hit uni and was able to save my own money, one of the first things I took on was an eePC and that netbook was a constant companion for years.
I miss the common availability of netbooks in that tiny form factor, they had a unique place in the market that is sadly quite vacant now with the manufacturers making equivalent devices pricing them way too high. Alongside the palmtop PC form factor they’re two styles I dearly wish they would revive.
Finally, a non-scam busting episode. Love your work!
Happy birthday, Seymour. That made me weirdly emotional. What a wonderful dream to have - bringing learning to children around the world.
this program is a success, not the success they envisioned but still a success.
Successful scam for those who got away with the money.
@@aleksazunjic9672 Ok.
As a american child I had no idea really about the OLPC project, but all I knew is I wanted one as a child. Hearing about the cause and people who lived through it is eye opening, definitely a revolutionary project of its time and way ahead too. Thanks for the awesome video!
I love when Netbooks are mentioned. I still have a Toshiba NB250. I let my daughter use it has her first computer (like 10+ years ago) and now it sits in the window behind me in my office. It has MX Linux on it now (might try Pop-OS on it soon). Still works great, battery even still holds a charge for a few hours.
Netbooks hold a special place in my heart... Sony and Toshiba had the best ones
You are the outlier for netbooks. Most people throw them away and buy another one after a couple of years because netbooks are already obsolete on launch. They are mostly a great way to bury the planet in e waste. If they are intel or AMD based, you can keep them going long after they were intended to be used. But ARM based netbooks which proliferate the landscape these days will be a doorstop in a decade. Even if you can keep them going with some obscure Linux distro, you won't want to. It is like trying to find something useful to do with a 10 year old flagship Samsung Galaxy. There isn't much you can do with them. Even for emulation, the options are limited because of the feature set of the APU. Meanwhile, a 10 year old i3 laptop will run Linux Mint or Ubuntu just fine and makes for a decent full featured basic PC.
@@Lurch-BotBro, you may be 100% correct with your essay but why did you need to sperg out like that to a stranger? 🫣
@@AestheticFunk he has even longer comments saying basically nothing on other peoples comments
This really is one of your best videos! The XO was in every Linux magazine in these days - but I never got the chance to try one. Amazing idea. Thank you - greetings from Austria!
I wanted one of these so much as a kid, but I was poor in a not-so-poor country, so I never got one. I still want one though. Maybe I'll buy one from ebay.
OLPC as long as they are not in Amerikkka.
Actually was interested at XOs video lastly, and this is one is AMAZING
It isnt an review, is an HISTORY, and the edition and the effort took here is just AMAZING
Totally gonna watch your other vids, keep up the great job
Great video. We use the Sugar OS on the computers at our out-of-school-time program in Malden, MA (USA) because we believe they're the best for education. And we LOVE that the source code is visible at the click of a couple buttons!
I love your videos! Keep up the good work!
I remember wanting one so bad as a kid that I saved up, only to be distraught that I couldn’t afford the give one get one.
Thank you for giving me the full story it was awesome!
I always wondered what happened with this laptop. I can’t help but feel if they had put Mac OS on it like they were offered that it would have been still around today.
It couldn't even connect to the internet, you are delusional to think mac OS would've done anything but make it even more obscure
@@Forakus Erm, what do you think those wifi antennas do? Of course it connects to the internet you dufus lol.
On the original X86 AMD Geode chip being a very low power single core CPU @ 500Mhz & 256mb of RAM(the VIA C7-M even at faster speeds was not much better per watt/CPU cycle than the AMD Geode, as I have an Everex Cloudbook being on of the first Netbooks of the 00's with one that before it died ran gOS aka good OS, and man is it sluggish), it would have ran sluggish AF compared to Fedora Linux, and Sugar GUI, or even then Gnome 2 desktop, while using more CPU clock cycles to do the same task, thus leading to worse battery life, plus Mac OS X would not have handled the screen mode switching, or the hardware power switching as well either. So a custom Linux GUI was the correct choice here for the hardware they were using.
However what we can somewhat argue maybe they should have gone with an ARM Soc, but AMD was one of their backers, and produces X86 chips, plus desktop Linux was far less mature on ARM at that point compared to X86, so I get why they went that route, again but there is zero argument to be made here that they should have gone with Mac OSX Whatsoever.
So yeah they had a solid well meaning idea with the OLPC project, it was just that tech was moving very fast in the 00's, and early 10's, with much much bigger players eating their lunch left, and right, and they just could not get their stuff together to make the volumes they needed to compete.
Lastly we really do have to thank them for what they did for kicking the bigger guys in the rear to get their stuff together, which lowered prices to the point these days, you can get something like a fairly powerful AMD Ryzen laptop at 300 - 400 bucks, or an Android tablet from a company like ONN for less than a 100 bucks that can handle basic daily compute task without being a total slug monster, which makes computing available to more people than ever in human history.
Wow, what a video.
The production value is insanely good!
Thank you for the video and thanks to everyone that made this amazing project a reality!
It's true, I totally remember at the time that laptops were about $1000. I feel like this thing helped bring in cheap laptops in the commercial market. I remember the whole "netbooks" thing when it happened, back when 8 hours battery life was a biiiig deal. I like your demo of Sugar, I got to play around with an image of it in either virtualbox or vmware, I forget which...
Around 2008. There was a little know "Phone for Africa" A smart phone to retail for under $10. A consortium of some huge IT and mobile companies made this cutdown G1 like Android phone with clock speed on demand. The project folded when the big players left. People mostly turned them in to Ebook readers or Twitter status displays.
I still have myXO-1 running and I still love this tiny miracle
One of the kindest and cutest episodes on CC 🥺
I even cried at the end 🥹
Thank you Ken!
The moment when you have a video randomly appear in a Krazy Ken's video! Thank you for the wonderful recap on the One Laptop Per Child project!
It's not crap, they put an honest effort into it.
Yes, although it was always a bad idea given that these were designed to be used off grid, but off grid you don't really get any of the benefits of having a computer for school use. The commenters I see in videos covering these that have good things to say about them are mostly from places that were developing at the time, but developed enough to have some degree of networking infrastructure and electricity available on a regular basis.
I remember this, it was an exciting time. I've actually used one as an old boss gave it to my mate at the time, I was very jealous and then he sold it on without offering it to me.
Not much to add, but thank you for submitting this. It can be both refreshing and even educational to have the exposure of good intentions added into our shared humanity.
I still have mine from the get one give one program and have used it recently with my kids
Microsoft actually developed a working version of Windows XP for the XO-1 and I've seen it running myself.
But it's main purpose was to drive a wedge between OLPC and the Open Source community and not to release it to the general public.
What a very sweet and thoughtful video. Nice work as always Ken ❤
Thank you : )
One thing people don’t think about is just how much of a difference seemingly unimportant things like a cheap laptop can make to someone’s life. You don’t *need* one to live but I’m sure it made all of those kids so happy. Remember, these kids cherish dolls made of scraps because that’s just how little they have. Besides the enjoyment aspect, I’m sure the educational aspect had a massive impact. Underdeveloped countries aren’t less educated because they’re not smart or driven, it’s the lack of resources. They have to spend time doing work for survival instead of being a kid and learning. It’s not a frivolous endevour that “should’ve been spent on water”. Haters just gonna hate.
This video made my day better. It’s so encouraging to know there ARE some people who have connections who actually care and want to help.
I remember the XO laptop campaign commercials on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network back in 2010
Wish we could still have those kinds of screens. Low power and daylight readable is really nice.
Remarkable 2?
I remembered hearing about OLPC and its goals, but I never really learned of its ultimate development, and success or failure, once the project fell off of mainstream news media radar. Thank you for doing such a deep dive into the subject, it's quite fascinating.
There used to be a contest on cereal boxes where you could win one of these, and another one would be donated. I wanted to win one at the time.
And Gushers!!!
I cant deny whenever linux or open source software is used in education, it brightens my day. The mission of XO is really wonderful. I also love to see schools showing children Tuxpaint for creativity, which still gets updated even in 2024. I would love to see more educational programs see expansion to linux
I love your scam busting videos, but your videos about actual technology that has done real good in the world are even better. I remember hearing about this laptop back when it was first being talked about, but eventually I'd forgotten all about it until I saw this video pop up in my subscriptions page. I very much look forward to your next video, and you keep doing what you do, I thank you.
I donated to the G1G1 and was able to get my own XO-1. I thought it was a great effort, and though the out of box functionality was limited for me, I think it had tremendous potential (I put in a bootable SD card to get a more full featured OS, and it ran pretty well with the limited hardware) There were some small missteps by the organization, but ultimately the sweeping changes in the industry is what led to it not becoming more successful. I do think that OLPC was partly responsible for those changes, so it goes to show the importance of sticking to your vision, but remembering to adapt it as the world changes.
12:10 That lady screen was awesome
DUDE...I've been thinking about this laptop for YEARS. I remember seeing the commercials when I was super little (prolly like 5 or 6, rough guess) and seeing the laptop flip around and desperately wanting one cause it somewhat resembelled my leapfrog at the time with the white and green color scheme. I haven't heard anything about it up until this video. All this time I wasn't sure if it was a real memory or some weird fever dream but I am so glad you mad this video, it satisfied that 5 or 6 year old child part of me :)
Ah, memories... I still have a couple of these, from doing contract work developing some activities for a foundation working for the OLPC foundation... I forget the details, but it was a fun and surprisingly easy platform to work with. The last job I had with them was developing a "photo frame" stile activity with the caveat of requiring some level of scripting and synchronization between multiple XOs, to serve as center pieces on tables for a Robin Hood foundation event. The idea was to buy these and show flowers along with notes and slides for running presentations, instead of buying actual flowers for the tables, with the plan being to donate the laptops at the end. Fun times!
10:12 - the laptop belonged to Homestar, not Strong Bad. I think Strong Bad only ended up using it once or twice.
That ending got me emotional, Ken.
I wasn't expecting that.
Though I am Not a Tech Person, this is one of the Very Best Tech Videos I've Ever seen on TH-cam. Thanks. What an Amazing Device, and Cause.
Neat twist on the 2 in 1 concept, pun intended. The swivel screen makes it easy for a student to show their teacher their work.
One laptop per child is an honorable goal but doing a startup to make a brand new laptop when there are old laptops out there which can be refurbished and sold for a lot less than $100 and perform way better than a completely cost compromised new device is not how to go about it. Takes care of two problems. Doesn't matter if the kids are well educated if, when they grow up, the world is completely buried in e waste laptops. Sacrificing their future with a scam to get rich on shovelware laptops isn't an honorable goal.
The joypad just screams, 'hack me to emulate NES and SNES games'.
That was a great story, and a nice change from what I normally see on this channel. Very well done. It sounds like the entire OLPC project was a grand, ambitious plan that did lots of good even if they weren't able to reach their goals. They should be proud of what the accomplished.
I remember following this back in the day.
And I remember that it wouldn't cost 100$ exactly and that it changed the name to XO, but basically It drifted out of my attention.
So THANK you for this closure!
I like how it used to be a achievement but nowadays people can get a laptop, or smartphone/tablet with similar prices.
one thing that came out of the GFC is that the New South Wales state government in Australia spent hundreds of millions putting in wifi to all schools and distributing netbooks to middle school students... this unit was the Lenovo S10... which is a early Atom single core netbook with minimal ram, a slow hdd and Windows 7... running on a 1,024 x 600p screen...obviously this ran terrible... I think sometime in 2016 the netbook business sort of died and by then I seen stuff like the Dell Inspiron 11 which has a quad core pentium, 4gb ram 120gb ssd on a 768p screen on win10 and that ran more than acceptable.... it took a while to get there...
I’m mad that the top comment isn’t DankPods screeching “EEEEE PEEEE CEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”
Really awesome video, man. Super interesting, and a pretty impressive piece of hardware, all things considered.
I remember seeing commercials for this laptop when I was a kid as a promotion for snacks like Fruit Gushers and Fruit by the Foot where one kid runs from home and delivers one of those laptops to a kid in Africa.
I work at a science center and we had a bunch of these in a box. They were set to be recycled and I’m really glad I decided to save one. I think people really undervalue general access to technology. Glad there are people like Seymour trying to fix that.
Its been years since I have seen an attractive ad. Thank you for this sponsor segment!
My school had these for computer classes! I remember playing Scratch on it and making so many different games and little movies.. I kinda miss these machines
I still remember begging my mom for Gushers and other on-brand fruit snacks for the opportunity to win one of these. Cool to see this laptop still having some interest!
0:23 a real shrekbook!