'hundred-dollar laptop' is revolutionary, amazing - lithium iron battery

XO laptop for each child (
Commonly referred to as "$100 laptop ")
It aims to change the world by bringing computing resources to children in the developing world.
But many of XO's innovations could eventually change the technology world.
When you first saw the XO, the idea immediately came to mind was "the toy of the child ".
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Personal Technology Center.
With its bright green, built-in-
On handling handle, funny rabbit ears and rubber membrane keyboard it looks like Fisher-
Prices may arise.
But when you pick it up, you realize how strong and well built XO is.
When you turn it on, you will find that you are wirelessly connecting to the Internet and other XO users who are creating a local network.
You'll find a lot of software designed for kids, but you'll also find breakthrough collaboration tools that allow you to work with others in ways that exceed some of the best corporate groupware.
Oh yes, even if the bright sun shines on the laptop screen, there is no problem with you reading the monitor.
But the sun is OK because it goes through a small, lowCost solar cells.
XO doesn't need much power because it runs at a fraction of the speed of the laptop, which is considered "green.
This is XO, a system born when MIT legend Nicholas Negroponte began building a $100 laptop. In order to make it possible to provide computers to children and schools in developing countries.
Although XO did not reach its target price of $100 (
Currently about $175)
Now it's almost ready to deploy around the world.
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time in the office of one laptop project for each child, and I first looked at the final beta version of XO, called "B4 ".
I also had the opportunity to speak with Walter Bender, president of OLPC, and Mary Lou Jepson, chief technology officer.
Based on the $100 laptop I 've seen before, I expect to be impressed with the economy, the low price
Power and wireless mesh for XO.
But what I saw with my own eyes exceeded expectations.
In short, XO is one of the most revolutionary computer systems I 've seen in a while.
I 've been looking at XO and I'm thinking, "Why can't my new expensive laptop do this?
"The technology that XO, the OLPC Foundation, is introducing could significantly change the face of future systems, especially in the power consumption area.
However, we should not expect the OLPC Foundation to start commercializing these technologies soon.
While it is still possible for XOs to sell to the public at a price that will help subsidize its deployment to the developing world, Jepson said when someone from Silicon Valley asked her if she would commercialize XO's technology, she said, "line up --
There are billions of children in front of you.
"Just by doing what it does, the OLPC Foundation will change the laptops and systems that we will see in the near future.
XO is changing the rules of the game and everyone wants other manufacturers to start offering features comparable to XO (
Premium especially).
In this article, I will cover the core innovations I have seen in the hardware and software capabilities of XO.
At the end of the day, you may be jealous of the computing resources that some lucky children in the developing world have.
But now they need it more than you do.
Hardware if the goal is to create a low
Laptops with low cost and low power consumption, then the place to start is the display, which is usually the most expensive and the most power-consuming
Is the laptop hungry?
When the foundation started developing XO, the first goal was to build a low display, Jepsen said. cost.
"But in the process," she added, "I want to make a better presentation that is more suitable for the conditions of use in the developing world.
"This means not only low power consumption, but also the ability to read the display in bright sunlight.
While it may take many years for commercial projects to develop new technologies, OLPC needs to achieve this in a few months.
There are a lot of technical details about how Jepsen and OLPC have successfully created a monitor that works in direct sunlight;
Two notable details are the use of diagonal rather than horizontal color stripes, and each pixel is blackand-
White and color pixels (
Each pixel is a color, red, green or blue).
"The trade-off is black --and-
"In the Sun, in the room or at night, the high resolution and color of white," Jepsen said . ".
It's all fascinating, but the real point isdoes it work?
When I was in the OLPC office, it was a sunny summer day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
We had lunch outside and under the intense sun I read the XO screen without any problem.
Yes, the content is black. and-
White instead of color (
Even though indoors, I found that the color quality of the XO display is good even when watching the video)
But better yeta black-and-
White screen that you can read, or color screen that you can't see outside?
I found the XO monitor to be the best direct-sunlight-
Check out the monitors I 've seen, even compared to small screens on PDAs and smartphones.
What about electricity?
According to Jepsen, the display uses an average power consumption of 1 watt, which uses a power of 100 milliwatts when the backlight is turned off.
Jepsen also said that they decided to put the memory in the timing controller of the display so that the display can remain on when the motherboard is turned off.
This is because, in many cases, people spend a lot of time reading and the processor does nothing.
They are able to put the CPU into a hibernation state or exit the hibernation state in a tenth of a second so that the user doesn't even notice the change.
In ebook mode, XO usually uses less than half a watt, Jepsen said.
When idling, XO uses about 1 watt of electricity, which makes Jepsen say, "It's the greenest laptop ever, not just the color of it.
Jepsen noted that the latest EnergyStar requires the laptop to use 14 watts when idling.
Of course, in terms of power supply and XO, much of the early attention was focused on the unique way to power the laptop, including the stupid additional crank in the early demo, which is no longer part of the laptop.
Instead of focusing on a particular power system, OLPC is committed to building an ecosystem of alternative power supplies.
These include small solar panels from $10 to strings-
Pull the generator to the bicycle system of the small windmill.
At the OLPC office, we saw a solar panel and a rope --
Pull system running.
When it comes to the power of the laptop, the battery is also a big problem.
At present, XO can use two different battery technologies: a classic nickel-metal hydrogen battery or an updated lithium-ion battery.
The first goal of the battery is safety.
To avoid the battery explosion that has plagued some laptop manufacturers in recent years.
In this case, both technologies are considered very safe, and OLPC has conducted extensive thermal testing for the system.
They also want to improve the life of the battery, so they have designed the battery to charge for five years or 2,000 to 3,000, Jepsen said.
Of course, when it comes to how long the charge lasts, the low power consumption of the system can help.
XO uses an average of 2 watts and 20 watts of battery
Hour span, XO can run easily for 10 hours with just one charge.
Jepson also said that considering the low cost of battery replacement ($10)
They are considering including a spare battery in each system.
Another power issue with the laptop is wireless, and the typical wireless system in the laptop consumes about 10 watts.
According to Jepsen, XO uses a revolutionary wireless mesh technology.
Power of 8 watts.
The wireless mesh structure of the laptop can be easily recognized through the rabbit ear antenna on the XO (
When in a drop position, protect the USB and audio ports of the system, and when rising, remove the antenna from the electronic device of the system to increase the range).
The technology itself is based on IEEE 802. 11f spec.
The wireless system turns each XO into a wireless router.
This means that in the village or town where the school is the only source of Internet connection, every child in the village connects to each other and the Internet by connecting to other XOs.
Jepsen said that in their tests, in the case of 10 jumps from the source, they still get the bandwidth of 2 M bps per second.
The range seems to be very good and the XO connection is over 2.
The ideal condition recognized by Jepsen is 3 kilometers (a flat plain).
While XO looks like a kid's toy, it's a lot of these toys --
Just like the function of making it a very durable system.
OLPC is aware that the laptop will be in a harsh environment and may be discarded.
The system is very durable in test deployments in the developing world, often thanks to many green bumpers and handles that provide a lot of buffering for the system and its monitors.
Of course, the rubber film keyboard is waterproof and dirty.
It has also been designed to be easily swapped out to accommodate different languages and character sets.
Another issue with XO is security.
As these systems enter some admittedly rough areas, is there any way to prevent them from being stolen or sold on the black market?
Shipment of all XO is inactive in regards to theft
Function status.
A trustworthy person when they arrive at school or final destination
The website activates the laptop using the special USB key he or she sent.
If the system is subsequently stolen or lost, the system will be remotely deactivated and changed to non-functional.
In terms of more standard security, XO uses a system called Bitfrost that implements many security best practices to limit access to applications, files, and users.
Using XO's software, most of the attention is focused on the hardware, which stands out because of the innovation and low cost of the hardware.
In terms of software, Fedora Linux-
The Sugar-based interface is often considered an interesting adaptation of Linux, mainly for simple applications and learning games.
However, once I get the chance to see sugar working in a real environment and running on B4 XOs, I'm pretty much as impressed with software innovation and hardware innovation.
The Sugar interface includes some very interesting features to manage files, tasks, and applications.
Combined with XO's wireless network, Mesh view in Sugar is one of the best and most innovative collaborative environments I 've ever seen.
Sugar's home screen is a fairly basic environment in which the user can launch the app and view the app he runs.
However, unlike Windows or Mac desktops, users spend very little time on the XO home screen.
A good candidate to be the main interface for file and application management is the log application, which, according to Walter Bender, president of OLPC, essentially replaces the standard layered applicationfile-system browser.
"On the table, we tend to focus on the hierarchy, but it turns out that, especially the children, and most of us, actually have a close connection to the time organization, says Bent.
What the log does is automatically track and mark all activities, files and applications accessed by sugar users based on time.
Its rich and customizable markup makes it possible to search and manage content in multiple ways, but logs are mostly temporal.
For example, if you are working on a project on Monday, then it would be easy to go back to that day and get back to the project you are working on.
However, one of the most powerful features of Sugar is the grid view.
In this view, the user can access from a dedicated button on the XO keyboard or a button in almost every application in the Sugar, and the user can see that other users are connected on a mesh network, can see what they are doing and can easily connect to these users and chat or share the work with them.
For example, teachers in a class can share reading assignments by simply putting e-books online.
Grids can be sorted in a number of ways, including by task, by item, by group, by partner, or even by geographical location.
Looking at the grid, I can easily see how huge an interface like this is in any company collaboration or project --Management tools.
Collaboration and sharing are also an important factor in other sugar applications.
Built in with XO
In the camera and microphone, it is easy for the user to have a video or audio chat with other users.
"Anything you are doing, you can put it on the chat overlay or use it for files-
"People share directly with each other," said Bender.
By default, all media in sugar are saved in an open Ogg Vorbis format-
Although the user will be able to import the codec if the user chooses-
The players included will support the most common format.
The bundled app in Sugar includes many common suspects: Firefox-
A simple writing app, an RSS reader, an ebook reader, a drawing tool, and of course a lot of learning games.
However, unlike some systems, they tend to be either just stupid-
The Sugar app spans the entire range, whether it's a down interface or an advanced tool.
"One of the core ideas behind what we're trying to do with sugar and laptops is 'low floor, no ceiling, '" Bender said '. ".
This means that the development tools bundled with Sugar include a simple Scratch environment for Python.
Or, the music creation tool has changed from a simple but interesting TamTam music box to a cSounds, a high-level sound programming language used in Hollywood.
When I was in the OLPC office, I saw some developers working on new and interesting apps and games for Sugar.
This includes an advanced calculator that handles many features, including word-
Match games based on calculations and customisable, useful for classroom quizzes.
A cooler application is to take the microphone out of the XO and use it as an analog data port, basically turning the XO into an oscilloscope.
Given where it will be deployed, this could be a very valuable customization for XO.
Like the OLPC project and XO, in general, most of the focus of sugar work is to provide tools for children and teachers to develop and customize their own applications and environments.
In many ways, this is the core capability of computing.
Yes, it's great to use the cool programs offered by others, but real learning and growth comes from building new apps and tools.
"We will provide this core and then the kids and teachers can load these other packages as they please," Bender said . ".
"Part of the idea is that they create things, but the core of reading, writing and arithmetic is there.
"This Week, OLPC announced that XO will eventually be put into mass production.
In a few months, millions of systems will begin opening up to children around the world.
We will eventually see if the program can really bring about the opportunities and educational changes that many children in every country of the world need.
Will XO change the world?
It remains to be seen.
Will it change the current state of technology? It already has.
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