Once again the market and technological progress produces something that a dedicated group of smart individuals at a non-profit could not do.
I have no idea idea why this happens, but I've seen it again and again.
I wish that non-profits could be more effective at things like this, I've certainly worked at enough that were going for similar goals. But for some reason, somewhere, the incentives or the structure just don't align to produce these breakthroughs.
I think that without the OLPC project and the fact that it identified that market these would not exist.
Even now there are plenty of people that would like sub $100 netbooks to disappear as soon as possible because there is very little room for bundle deals at that pricepoint.
If you strip out the windows license on this thing it costs about $65.
Can you cite a source for that cost? That's 35% Windows tax, which would leave the market ripe for Linux boxes to undercut and pocket the difference. In my opinion, we'll take computers as cheap as we can get them and remote to the big iron; this being a "small" market is wishful thinking by established players.
To be fair, this isn't the same as the OLPC. The OLPC was rather rugged, and well designed for the kids it was intended to serve (see the wifi, screen, etc). This is simply a normal, but cheap, computer - impressive though the achievement is.
Well, you can't compare the OLPC with this here. The only thing they have in common is the projected price.
The OLPC has been built years ago and almost matched the 100$ price.
Also the OLPC XO is high tech that will work even in sub-Saharan Africa while this thing here will break before reaching Africa.
The OLPC did not work out as well as planned because governments did not buy enough of them so it's rather a mistake to work with governments on such a project.
802.11b was the first widespread wifi standard and it was not even released 11 years ago (October '99), and yet you had a computer with similar specifications ? I assume you refer to a laptop using 'wavelan' ?
The closest that I can remember from those days to what is offered here was the compaq contura aero, after that the Toshiba libretto, neither of them had built in wifi (heck, they had no networking at all, just a serial port, and a pcmcia slot that you could plug an ethernet expansion card in if you felt like spending more $ on that than on the whole laptop discussed in this thread).
Both of these machines were of a build quality that the machine you're looking at here probably could not match, but their price points were considerably higher.
I have no idea idea why this happens, but I've seen it again and again.
I wish that non-profits could be more effective at things like this, I've certainly worked at enough that were going for similar goals. But for some reason, somewhere, the incentives or the structure just don't align to produce these breakthroughs.
Maybe one day we will figure it out.