TechLahore

We’ve been discussing low cost Netbooks and Tablets for the last several years here at TechLahore, and we’ve always felt that the mainstreaming of these devices will be a huge force in democratizing communications, access and learning in the developing world. In 2007 and through 2008, we were tracking Nicholas Negroponte’s much ballyhooed Sugar OLPC [...]

It’s pretty clear that 2010 is going to be the Year of the Tablet. Here we are in the first week of January and I’ve already seen more tablet products concepts than I can count on all my fingers and toes. There’s the ill-fated Crunchpad since reborn as the ridiculously named JooJoo, the Apple Tablet [...]

For over two years now, we’ve been covering the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) saga. Brave Prof. Negroponte embarked on this adventure years ago and after much wrangling with corporations, the loss of his CTO and other staffers, and cost over-runs, the OLPC Sugar still hasn’t quite hit that $100 number. For a while, the [...]

There’s been a lot of press lately about India’s “$10″ laptop. Before many details were available, it was hailed as a great stride forward in systems design and we were all anxious to learn what groundbreaking innovations had enabled a laptop to  be built so cheaply. As more has come out in the open about [...]

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 [...]

So it’s official. The $100 laptop now costs $200 and that too, in quantities of 10,000 units. It’s really sad to see a great intellect such as Prof. Negroponte’s being wasted on this project. Before his One-Laptop-Per-Child project could even come close to producing units in any real quantity, with a much shorter development effort, [...]