Quality and Price Analysis of the XO-1 Laptop for the One Laptop Per Child Scheme

KISS - Keep it Simple

The XO-1 is the first generation of laptop for the One Laptop Per Child Scheme (OLPC) for children in less economically developed countries. The reason why they need to keep it simple is because the laptops need to endure tough weather conditions, have no immediate access to repairs and make it afforadable to mention a few.

Quality

The XO-1 is much more simple than compared to your average laptop, yet it can also handle more extreme weather conditions, spills and to be severely damaged without degregation of functionality. One of the design features was that they intentionally omitted parts (Wikipedia OLPC_OX-1) that require motors such as hard drives, fans and CD-ROMs. They state that this is to keep power consumption down to a minimum but I belive there is another reason, eliminating weaknesses. Moving parts, such as motors, have a limited life span. As the XO-1 laptops will be used in hot, dusty conditions, motors would be more suseptible to failure. There is the added problem of trying to fix such parts in the rural areas.

Obiously, removing these parts in a normal laptop would render it useless and yet the OLPC foundation have made the XO-1 a viable and valuable piece of electornic for the children. The OLPC team have designed a motherboard that encompasses all the parts required for a laptop with connectors for the keyboard and screen. To acount for the loss of a traditional harddrive, they have embedded a 1GB flash chip (OLPC Wiki Myths) which is similar to that of a USB pen drive. The 1GB can be very limiting so they have included a SD card slot and USB slots for expansion to main storage. The USB slots are also to be used in place of a CD-ROM.

Overall, the OLPC team have kept parts to a minimum, quality high by way of combining parts (motherboard example) to produce a laptop that can be used for educational purposes. The laptop is weather proof, spill proof, temperature resilient and essentially, child proof.

Price

As mentioned above, the OLPC foundation to the step to make the hardware as simple as possible by combining several of the main components into one package (motherboard shown on the right). They have also chosen to go with main stream electronic parts that are cheap to buy in large quantities and easily available (OLPC Wiki Hardware Design).

By having keeping it simple (mainly with less components), they are decreasing their assembly costs as there are fewer parts to put together. All in all, that is how they acheive a very useful piece of technology for the mear price of $199 (£133.48)

Easier Maintenance

The XO-1 needs to be easy to maintain, this is because there are no special repair centers or IT specialists to help with the laptops in the rural areas of the less economically developed countries where the laptops are used.

Quality

The OLPC team have made the XO-1 modular. This means that there are essentially 4 main pieces that make up the XO-1; the case, screen, motherboard and keyboard. I believe that this action has lead to a higher quality as there would have been more focus on 4 parts during the development stages, unlike the amount of extra components in a normal laptop in its development stages.

This makes it easier to maintain as dissasembly and reassembly is relativly straight foward. While the quality of the parts are excellent, the maintenance is only as good as the person who has fixed/maintained it. By making repairs in the field easy and with just one screw driver (OLPC Wiki Deployment Guide/Service Repairs), the quality, in my opinion, is maintained.

Price

The replacement parts for the XO-1 are considerably cheaper than that of a normal laptop. Here is a comparison with a small laptop, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 as to how much spare parts cost.

Battery
XO-1 - $25 (£16.77) from ilovemyxo.com
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - £87.06 from dell.com

Charger
XO-1 - $15 (£10.06) from ilovemyxo.com
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - £23.03 from dell.com

Screen
XO-1 - $80 (£53.66) from ilovemyxo.com
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - $125 (£83.84) from screentekinc.com

Total - Cost of all 3 parts
XO-1 = £80.49
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - £193.93

You can see that there is a huge difference in cost for essentially similar parts. This means that is more afforable for people buy. The XO-1 can even fixed by the children that own the laptops (YouTube), that's how easy it is.

References

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Replacement Battery (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=451-10691&mfgpid=1677633

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Replacement Charger (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=450-12394&mfgpid=1677633

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Replacement Screen (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://www.screentekinc.com/Dell-K682H.shtml

Deployment Guide/Service Repairs (Last Modified 8 December 2009). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide/Service_Repairs

Exchange Rate Conversion (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://www.xe.com/

Hardware Design (Last Modified 29 November 2007). Retrieved May 3 2009 from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_design

OLPC Myths, Question/Answer 1 (Last Modified 14 November 2008). Retrieved May 2 2009 from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths

OLPC: Repairing an XO (11 August 2007). Retrieved 1 May 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pus_fA1Tv9w

OLPC XO-1 (Last Modified May 3 2009). Retrieved May 3 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1

One Laptop Per Child (Last Modified April 30 2009). Retrieved May 3 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

XO-1 Replacement Battery (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://www.ilovemyxo.com/product/xo-replacement-battery.html

XO-1 Replacement Charger (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://www.ilovemyxo.com/product/xo-power-adapter.html

XO-1 Replacement Screen (n.d.). Retrieved 3 May 2009 from http://www.ilovemyxo.com/product/xo-screen.html