TechLahore

The OLPC’s XO (or “Sugar”) is really getting flattened. They’ve gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. Initially, they weren’t able to meet the $100 target and ended up being close to $200. Then some key countries that Mr. Negroponte was trying to win over – including Pakistan – decided to abandon the XO since it didn’t run Windows. And now, it seems that a very minimal number of these devices are being shipped. In contrast, the Intel Classmate PC has attracted a lot of interest. Pakistan, Libya and others have decided to place orders for hundreds of thousands of these machines. Finally, on the consumer side, the Eee PC has made waves and continues to sell like hot cakes from sites like Newegg and Amazon. Upcoming SKUs will further reduce price.

The Wall Street Journal completely destroys OLPC and the XO in this new article. We’ve previously reported on the lack of progress on the OLPC project as well. We said it before and we’ll say it again, this project has been a waste of many bright and intelligent people.

What we’re really excited about are projects such as the one Bill Gates is promoting; a phone “driven” PC-like experience. Or even some local efforts like, Sirius by FiveRivers Technologies out of Lahore.

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