One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, or the XO, was a flop however you look at it. Instead of just making a cheap, basic machine that could tough it out in its target third-world market, Nicholas Negroponte’s supposedly $100 laptop instead chose to both patronize and confuse with an over-simplified interface. At the same time, as the price rose and dates slipped by, the Rise of the Atom put cheap netbooks within reach of anyone with a few hundred bucks.

Now, Nick’s back, with the XO-3. The new hardware (read: vaporware) will come in the familiar green and white livery, only this time it’s a tablet (surprise, right?). The XO-3 will be showing its 800Mhz, 8.5-by-11-inch face in 2010, when hopefully the technology will exist to build what is essentially a giant iPod Touch for just $75.

But making an impossibly cheap entertainment device for developing countries (for what else is a tablet but a handheld media-center? Certainly not a functional computer or Microsoft’s earlier tablet PC efforts would have been successful) is not the only mission of the OLPC group. Negroponte told Engadget that there will be an OLPC 1.5 appearing in January, a $200 update to the current hardware, and an OLPC 1.75 in 2011, which will make good on the dual-screen promise first teased in May this year.

We’d love to see all of these devices, but CG mockups and philanthropic promises aren’t the same as real, shipping hardware. Still, the picture do look good.

The $75 Future Computer [Forbes]

OLPC shows off absurdly thin XO-3 concept tablet for 2012 [Engadget]

The dual-touchscreen XO-2 was a fantastical concept. But it’s nothing on OLPC’s XO-3, a hot, messy wet dream of a tablet: All semi-flexible plastic, multitouch, backlit and reflective ereading modes, thinner than an iPhone and $75.

In other words, it’s everything people have been fantasizing about in a tablet—durable, thin, multitouch, multiple screen modes for computing and reading—but for just 75 dollars. And Nicholas Negroponte, large head of the OLPC, wants it by 2012.

Remember, this is the organization that didn’t just scrap the XO-2, but couldn’t even tack a touchscreen onto the current XO-1 laptop, which isn’t anywhere near a hundred bucks. (Hey, at least they gave up on the dual-touchscreen idea.) I think this sadly says everything about the likelihood of it happening, as much as I’d love to see and play with this thing: “We don’t necessarily need to build it,” Negroponte told Forbes. “We just need to threaten to build it.”

Well, I can’t wait to see the XO-4! [Fuse Project, Forbes]

“What do you expect from an $80 netbook,” asks our friend Sascha of Netbook News? You may of course answer “Not much” but that would be cynical. After all, a box with a 7-inch screen, three USB ports (suck it, MacBook Air), Ethernet and a card reader is surely $80 worth of electronics already?

The MenQ EasyPC E700 is actually made by Cherry Pal, whose tiny Cherry Pal PC we looked at last year. Back then the machine had cloud-based storage, no screen, a 400 MHz Freescale processor and a huge 256MB RAM crammed into a box which looked like a cheap, telco-provided router. It cost $250.

The new MenQ has even lower specs, but is a third the price and is a standalone machine. The chip a 400MHz ARM processor from Samsung, it has 64MB RAM and runs Windows CE (remember that?) and the screen resolution is 800×480. There’s even Wi-Fi in there.

Amazingly, Sascha says that this thing is fast. It runs a web browser, and if you’re used to using a netbook, that’s pretty much all you need. We’re not sure how it would fare on those awful sites that insist on using Flash, but the spec sheet says that YouTube works just fine, along with Skype. Oh, and the system boots in a second.

Still not impressed? Then consider this: The MenQ, an entire computer, costs the same as a 4GB iPod Shuffle. Do you want one now?

$80 Netbook! What Do You Get? [Netbook News. Thanks, Sascha!]

EasyPC [MenQ]

As part of a new program with Apple, the University of South Florida is giving each of its 460 student athletes free MacBook Pros to keep up with their studies on the road.

In addition to handing out notebooks to jocks, the university is adding new materials to iTunes U, a page in the iTunes Store hosting educational content, such as video podcasts and digitized lectures.

The university declined to comment on the cost of the program, but a spokesman told Fortune that the cost of the notebooks for the spring semester was in the “six figures” — even after a special Apple discount.

To me, this program seems excessive, and I’d imagine the non-athletes are pissed. Which college student, jock or not, doesn’t already own a notebook?

Far more interesting is the pilot program at Abilene University, in which the school is handing out free iPhones to its entire freshman class to transform the classroom experience using web apps.

Press release [USF]

See Also:

• How the iPhone Could Reboot Education
• Apple Stores Offer Field Trips for Schools
• Apple Takes on School in Latest Trademark Battle
• Apple, Stanford Teaching iPhone Development for Free
• Apple Launches iPhone University Program
• From iLightswitch to iBurrito, Stanford Students Concoct iPhone …

Photo: *.*/Flickr

I’ve been avoiding this review for the better part of a month because, with all the hype the Envy line has gotten (some deserved), I took the Envy 15 out of the box and had one thought: “Cheap.”

In brief, the Envy is indeed light system with plenty of power, but it never feels premium, nor does the battery life reach adequate levels.

Sure, it comes in a nice black box labeled “ENVY” with properly monolithic upscalism. And the computer itself is wrapped in a very, very soft black cloth.

But once removed, I can’t distinguish this $1,800 laptop from any random PC on a table at Best Buy. HP’s premium laptop, one that’s been oooh’d and ahhh’d ad nauseam, could have been a $600 budget system.
The aluminum magnesium body, which works well enough in the 13-inch Envy, scales to become a big, synthetic-feeling disappointment. Yes, it’s just an inch thick and 5.2lbs (about a pound lighter than peers), but the footprint is so large that, upon opening the packaging, I at first believed HP had sent me a 17-inch system (keep in mind, there’s still no room for an internal optical drive).

It was a surprising thought, but at that moment, I realized something: HP is the new Dell. Disregarding their impressive TouchSmart desktops, HP has built the quintessential drab PC laptop and labeled it as “designer.” Meanwhile, Dell, with their fashion-forward Adamo line, has left rivals like HP somewhere back in 1995.

Kudos, Dell.

I almost hate to continue describing the system, lest I beat a dead horse. The keyboard is adequate, but every impact reverberates through your finger, making the laptop feel more fragile than it probably is. The trackpad, despite multitouch promises, is dreadful to use. Two-finger scrolling is met with a perpetual half-second (or greater) delay, and clicking the buttonless pad (engineered much like a MacBook Pro pad) screams unfinished prototype.
There’s simply nothing elegant about the mechanics, even though the 1920×1080 screen is indeed sharp, HDMI and eSATA connections are convenient and the Beats-branded speakers are very balanced and rich…for laptop speakers.

Performance

But my hate-fest for the Envy ends there. If you don’t mind the aesthetics and feel—and at this price, you really should—the system won’t disappoint. The 1.6GHz Core i7, coupled with 6GB of RAM, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, and ATI Mobility Radeon 4830 (with 1GB RAM) has gotten performance nods from around the web.

While the system can’t best 20fps in the higher tiers of Crysis, it can reach 32fps if you scale the graphics down to 1024×768, according to Notebookcheck. Older and less insane titles perform even better.

PCMag’s cross-laptop testing found that the Envy isn’t the fastest laptop out there, but it keeps pace with other Core i7 systems to the point that such a distinction doesn’t really matter. And it’ll shame Core2Duo systems, like the aging MacBook Pro.

In real world use, the speed is a pleasure, and a welcome level of overkill for mediacentric web browsing in an era when Atoms are chugging to just get the job done.

Battery Life

But all this performance comes at a heavy, heavy price. You should only expect the Envy to get a measly 1 hour, 20 minutes of battery life*. Given this system’s sizable footprint, it needs to last more than 2 hours under moderate use. Stick a bigger battery in there, HP. Something. Please.

(*nonstop web browsing, Wi-Fi on, screen at 3/4 brightness.)

Misguided Envy

Some of you will be fooled by the light body covered in laser-etched paisley—probably the same among you who can drink instant coffee, listen in 92kbps MP3s and think that SD broadcasts look identical to Blu-ray movies.
And that’s fine. I can understand why someone might like the Envy, especially given the processing power and modest 5.2lb weight. It’s just a shame that anyone would pay so much for it.

HP, Acer, Toshiba, etc, you think I like giving Apple all my money? There’s a staggering amount of design talent in the world. Find it. Fund it. And give it a chance to wipe the smug grin off Cupertino. Offer us all something that we should really be envying.



Light


Fast


Respectable I/O


Feels cheap


Wretched battery life