Talk:One Laptop per Child/Archive 5

This is an archive of past discussions about One Laptop per Child. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 3

Give One, Get One

It appears as if that program has been terminated, all references to it (except historical) should be removed from the page. Id rather it be done by someone with an account... 99.253.4.217 (talk) 04:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Nicholas Negroponte reportedly announced, along with OLPC XO-2, that G1G1 would be offered again in August or September, 2008. Mwarren us (talk) 18:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Article since updated. -- Beland (talk) 17:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Naming, splits and merges

In all the naming and renaming and redirecting, this discussion page seems to have become disembodied from the article page. Not sure if the problem lines in the efforts to clean up some double redirects from our friendly bot, Rossbot, but we now have a really tangled web... Can we somehow get back to basics: an article titled "One Laptop per Child," the non-profit social welfare association whose mission is to give every child an opportunity for learning, and an article about the "XO Laptop," aka the "$100 Laptop" or "Children's Machine", designed and built by the association in keeping with its mission? (Would those who oppose a split be willing to make the XO article a section within the main article?) --Walter.bender 22:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I fixed the redirect problem for the talk page... --Walter.bender 20:35, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Not fixed: the main article is One Laptop per Child but the discussion redirects to Talk:XO-1 (laptop). --IanOsgood 07:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

New proposal: rename to OLPC XO and split out One Laptop per Child article

See Article split discussion below for latest discussion. +sj +

Merge Eduwise into this article?

I am wondering whether the Eduwise article should become a part of this article under a section about "Other Developing World Educational Laptops"?

I am wondering this because there is a question of whether the Eduwise article is really notable on its own. The OLPC project spent tens of millions on R&D and made a new graphical operating system interface and set of applications, as well as inventing a new screen, a new wireless card and so on. The Intel laptop however, is a small laptop with a tiny screen. It's in a cool blue colour, but it is just a standard laptop.

There may be loads of small laptops for the developing world coming out. Many of them will have similar issues to the OLPC. The Eduwise could be one paragraph in this new section.

Zeth 02:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

This ambiguity exists in large part because of the decision to merge the OLPC article with the Children's Machine article. “One laptop per child” is a concept. It is an education project that can be implemented in more than one way, by no means limited to the embodiment of the "Children's Machine." Eduwise—and any other effort to make affordable laptops for children's learning—is aligned with that mission. The Children's Machine itself is OLPC's instantiation of a laptop that meets the needs of children learning, who arguably need more—not fewer—features than high-end laptops. Notably, OLPC asserts that children need three things unique to their condition: low power, sunlight readability, and automatic connectivity. --Walter.bender 15:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I hear your point, there is a tension between the pedagogical concept of "an educational programme involving laptops that have been specifically designed with the needs of developing world children in mind" and the particular implementation that is the Quantas build laptop. There is also the software and so on, nothing stops another manufactuer putting Linux and Sugar on a laptop (or desktop even). Wikipedia is not a product catalogue, so the pedagogical concept has to be at the heart of the combined article. It could do with someone completely redoing it. Zeth 13:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how merging the Eduwise article would be warrented. The Intel project may not be as ground-breaking or as innovative as OLPC but it's still easily notable on its own. —mako ^{(talk•contribs)} 16:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

"still easily notable on its own" - on what grounds is it notable? Please share your reasons. What if every laptop manufacturer brings out one of these things? Wikipedia is not a product catalogue.

Eduwise deserves it's own article, there will soon be more than enough information on that project to warrant its own page. --69.136.111.100 23:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Restructuring after the "merge"

The structure of the merged document is at best awkward. The lead should really be the description of One Laptop per Child (its mission, structure, history, etc.) followed by a description of the Children's Machine aka $100 Laptop aka 2B1 aka XO-1, which is the current instantiation of a laptop being deployed to fulfill the mission. OLPC has been very public about its hope that there will be multiple organizations/companies buiding machines suitable for its mission. --Walter.bender 17:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

So you've said, but I haven't seen this referenced anywhere. Anyway, the article was rather a mess even before the merge. I'll see about tagging it just now. Chris Cunningham 18:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

"So you've said but I haven't seen this referenced anywhere." Here is one reference [1].--Walter.bender 15:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The naive reader (i.e. me!) needs to have terms such as 2B1 and XO-1 explained the first time they appear in the article.

Requested move (February 2007)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was PAGE NOT MOVED -- as there was no consensus for the move per discussion below. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Children's Machine → One Laptop Per Child — Damn! I lost all I wrote when my browser crashed! Sigh...there's no way I'll convince you all to vote with me on this one now. :( Anyway, I was proposing that Children's Machine be moved to One Laptop Per Child with a section on the laptop, and a section on the project. I attended linux.conf.au and went to a few talks about OLPC (done by Chris Blizzard and Jim Gettys) and not once did I hear the phrase "Children's Machine". Don't take my word for it. Watch the videos. — JeremyTalk 10:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

"OLPC XO" is probably more appropriate. That is the way car names are done. "OLPC" could be a disambiguation page between "OLPC XO" and something like "OLPC Foundation" or "OLPC, Inc." as appropriate. AlbertCahalan 16:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

revisiting, along with a requested article split (see below) : the right name is probably "OLPC XO" (looking at the most popular name in references and articles of late), and the article on the machine should not be conflated with the article about the non-profit. +sj + 23:24, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add # '''Support''' or # '''Oppose''' on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

Survey - in support of the move

Support. Why? OLPC gets 5,700,000 Google hits. "One Laptop per Child" gets, 1,300,000 Google hits. "Children's Machine" gets 60,000 Google hits. "$100 Laptop" gets 800,000 Google hits. Use the most common name! Vegaswikian 20:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey - in opposition to the move

Oppose -For reasons I outlined below. The article should be named for what people are more likely to search for. The actual content of the article is far more centred around the laptop rather than the organization. In short, this is a "Children's Machine"(or "$100 Laptop") article. So renaming it to anything else would be silly. Bladestorm 15:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Oppose the most common reference that i have personally seen, online and in news media has been to the $100 laptop. i will say that in searching online, I have seen the "one laptop per child" used more often then Children's machine. 205.157.110.11 00:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Don't forget that how these articles are labelled is for the sake of readers. People are far less likely to look up the "OLPC" movement than they are to look up the "$100 Laptop".

Furthermore, just look at the article:

First, an introduction to the machine, and then eventually a mention of the OLPC. Then descriptions of the machine being rugged, using flash memory, networking, price points, etc... all in just the introduction. Next, the OLPC, history, and participating countries, yes. But then, that's followed by a comprehensive investigation of the technology, design, hardware, omitted features, power consumption, display, networking, keypad/touchpad, enclosure, and then software. And then there's criticism, which first touches on technology, and then environmental concerns, and then actually deals with the use of money, and then back to theft and resale of the hardware.

See the problem? To an extremely large degree, the actual content of the article is about the laptop itself. The only way you could possibly move this article to the OLPC would be if you were to gut at least half of the content out of the article. Do you really want to do that?

Fact is, this article's about the machine, not the OLPC. Renaming the article to something it really isn't about would be unintuitive and damaging. Bladestorm 15:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I came here via a redirect from OLPC... but I was really looking for the computer specs. I wouldn't trust wikipedia search to tolerate punctuation; very often it does not. (see the C++ article for example) 24.110.145.57 00:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

On the laptop hardware page, the laptop is called 'XO'. In that case, the article should be moved to XO. — JeremyTalk 01:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally I don't see this as one article. There should be one for the group. The hardware should be split off into an article, XO-1. There may be a need for the accessories to have an article, but that will depend on how many models actually wind up being created and how common the accessories are across those machines. Vegaswikian 20:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Deja Vu

There was once an article about OLPC that was separate from the article on the laptop. Against the advice of some, the article was merged. The combined article does not do justice to the mission: one laptop per child, lowercase. That said, I am not sure that the we are covering any new ground in this discussion. --Walter.bender 20:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I ran into this discussion trying to do WP:RM cleanup. This is confusing as a combined article. See my comments in the move discussion. If someone wanted to clean this up by splitting this into two or three articles, that would solve a lot of the problems I see with the current setup. I think even with the prior merge, being bold would apply here for someone who understands this reasonably well and split the article. Vegaswikian 20:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Rename to OLPC XO

Is it time to rename this article to OLPC XO yet? The name "Children's Machine" is used less and less now. —Pengo 04:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I have done the following homework: — JeremyTalk 12:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Pengo appears to have moved this before the RM process was completed. Since there doesn't seem to be any dissent, I'm removing the tag. You may want to consider Vegaswikian's advice below, though. Dekimasu よ! 04:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

For XO-1

One Laptop Per Child official site: http://laptop.org/; http://laptop.org/laptop/; Date: current; Mentions XO all over the site. Especially credible because it is the official site of the project.
#olpc IRC channel on freenode: Date: current; Official IRC channel of the OLPC project. IRC topic contains references to "XO-1", not "Children's Machine".
Engadget articles: http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/14/quanta-builds-the-first-ten-xo-1-prototypes/; http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/olpcs-xo-1-gets-its-first-unboxing/; Date: October 2006; News articles containing references to "XO-1". One is a primary source, and one is a secondary source. Credible. Engadget has its own Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engadget
International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/19/features/design20.php; Date: November 2006; Secondary source reporting about the "XO-1". No mention of "Children's Machine".
OLPC News: http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/greece/olpc_greece_childrens_machine_xo.html; http://www.olpcnews.com/prototypes/xo/olpc_news_hands-on_xo.html; Date: March 28-30, 2006; Quite recent articles, so XO-1 is the most recently-used term.
DesktopLinux.com: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9910170884.html; Date: November 2006; Calls it the "OLPC XO-1".
Official Shipping Docket: Date: April 5, 2006; At linux.conf.au 2007, the OLPC people Jim Gettys and Chris Blizzard asked for eligibility submissions for those interested in getting an XO-1 machine. My Dad and I sent a submission, and are scheduled to be receiving a machine tomorrow. The notification email he received from the project called it the "XO B2" (beta 2). No mention of Children's Machine.

For Children's Machine

Ars Technica: Note the following older article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060825-7593.html; Date: August 2006; This source calls the laptop "Children's Machine", but look at the date — August 2006! Any article more recent that I could find said "XO-1". "Children's Machine" is clearly an older term.

Requested move

Please see the rationale in the beginning of the section. — JeremyTalk 12:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Support per previous discussion. After the rename, the OLPC related information should be split out into a separate article. Vegaswikian 21:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move and split

Suggestion:

move this article to OLPC XO, for reasons noted above; most recent references to the machine use either "XO" or "OLPC XO". XO-1 is a term that hasn't been used much in a while; 'OLPC XO' is less ambiguous than 'XO-1 (laptop)', and in use.
separate the material about the laptop (including hardware and firmware details) from that about the non-profit (One Laptop per Child, including philosophy and organization details).

+sj + 00:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with #1. But I don't see a need to (re)split the article as yet, as One Laptop Per Child is still virtually synonymous with the laptop, and I don't believe they're working on anything but the laptop. However, in future I'm sure there will be a need to have separate articles. —Pengo 00:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
- There is also the OLPC XS. AlbertCahalan 03:08, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
  - True. Do you want to work on a draft split on a temp page? +sj + 14:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Support Split - I agree with the split, but not the move. Keep this page for the laptop with a brief summary on the project, and retask the old OLPC page for the project itself. --Basique 21:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Support split - among other things, other hardware in the project as a whole will be coming along soon, so the project needs a more general separate coverage. I'd also support a rename to the more-correct/official "XO" name, and redirect from here. Georgewilliamherbert 22:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Independent of having more hardware come along, an organization and a piece of hardware are different. The article is currently confusing where it switches back and forth between the two. +sj +
Oppose split The project and the laptop are intimately connected. Does the criticism section apply to the laptop or the project? When new hardware shows up we can discuss how best to handle it. --agr 22:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Most criticisms are one or the other; some are of both, and deserve mention in both places. +sj +

News and Misleading URL

One Laptop Per Child News is not affiliated with One Laptop per Child, Association. "Offical" news about the project can be found in the project's wiki. --Walter.bender 21:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

OLPC News

Really sure sure it's a good idea to list OLPC News as a news source, the owner of the site has demonstrated considerable bias against the project in the past. --Basique 00:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Good catch. It keeps creeping its way back into the extlink sections, but it's a troll site and doesn't have any place here. Unfortunately it looks benign enough if one doesn't read it too closely, like MozillaQuest did back in the day, so people add it with good intentions. Removed again. Chris Cunningham 12:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, OLPC News is not a troll site, nor do I have bias against OLPC as an idea. As I've said often, I celebrate the ability of One Laptop Per Child to bring technology to the forefront of economic development, and can't wait to have a XO myself, but I fear the lack of a defined implementation strategy and realistic cost estimates will create great waste and disillusionment with technology.

It's only too bad that neither you, nor OLPC can take peer criticism, even though it is promoted as a core OLPC learning & Sugar UI component. - Wayan Vota, Editor of OLPC News

It is curious that your complaint about about the people commenting here somehow turned into an assertion that OLPC cannot take peer criticism. What is the evidence for this assertion? While I personally disagree with much of what you have written about the project and the "tabloid-style" in which it is written, my only complaint has been in regard to the continued confusion about the affiliation of olpcnews with OLPC. At the time of my initial post on this page, there was no disclaimer on your site. I know experienced journalists who still get confused about the lack of affiliation, hence I argue that it is still not sufficiently clear to the casual reader. --Walter.bender 19:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The OLPC News link is back. It is has been a continued source of misinformation about OLPC. While it is probably relevant that it be listed, it should perhaps be noted that it has been a source of opinion, not facts about the project. --Walter.bender 00:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree Walter, the OLPC News link has been removed yet again. --Basique 23:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

And Walter just provided the evidence to prove my assertion that OLPC can't take criticism with his opinion that OLPC News is "a continued source of misinformation about OLPC" when respected news organs, and even his peers, do look to OLPC News for independent information and discussion about the project. Wayan Vota, Editor of OLPC News

The MIT Media Lab is also involved in the project.

DISCLAIMER: MIT is not making laptops. MIT is not in the product marketing, development and distribution business, and OLPC is wholly independent of MIT and the Media Lab. In no way does MIT endorse OLPC or any of its products. MIT resources are not being used for OLPC. --Walter.bender 21:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Article begins wrong.

"intended to provide every child in the world"

Just wrong. This laptop is directed for poor-developed countries. North American children will never see a piece of this because they already has good conditions for education. --Ragnarok Addict 22:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

OLPC is trying to reach the one-billion school-aged children in the developing world; not because we think the children in the developed world don't need connectivity and tools for expression and collaboration, but because, relatively speaking, they have many other means to these ends available to them. That said, "good conditions for education" is probably overstated. --Walter.bender 00:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Also in the begining of the article is this line: "...intended to be distributed to children around the world, especially to those in developing countries..." Should this not be changed to "...intended to be distributed to children in developing countries...", because, as far as I know, that is the current goal of this project. Penman 1701 02:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually from what I've been reading on the OLPC website and wiki it actually is intended for every child around the world. It's just that the developing countries have first shot, so to speak. deepsack (talk) 05:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Power generator

I don't see info here regarding a power generator. Is that question still completely open? I have been wondering if OLPC has been considering harnessing the common habit of bouncing the knee while seated. Agape bright 00:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The power generator is being made by Potenco another offshoot of MIT Labs. A short Gizmodo article on it here, and one from a blog here. --69.136.111.100 13:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The Potenco solution is one of several OLPC will be testing in the spring of 2007. FYI. it is probably capable of being used to harness "the common habit of bouncing the knee while seated." --Walter.bender 14:20, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Walter! --69.136.111.100 05:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

If this project leads to the widespread availability of a cheap, robust human-powered source of electricity, that could be the most important contribution of the whole project to the developing world. Add a one-watt LED reading lamp, replace kerosene lamps, save the planet!-69.87.204.36 19:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Details since added to OLPC XO-1. -- Beland (talk) 17:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Sugar

The Sugar page needs a lot of love, there is a ton of media and informaion out there for it just need someone to get the ball rolling. --69.136.111.100 13:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

color display description

"Backlighted color mode, a blurry 1200×900 that is similar to between 400×300 and 693×520. (like NTSC or PAL television)"

Where did this come from? The display, in color is hardly blurry--even at this lower resolution, it rivals the resolution of a traditional laptop display. The worst-case is still over 100dpi. Also, there is virtually no underlying relationship between how NTSC or Pal work and the OLPC color system. What is the analogy you are trying to make? That you lose spatial resolution by introducing color? That is *almost* universally true. --Walter.bender 12:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems to just be someone trying to make sense of it all. I've put it back to how it was. —Pengo 13:08, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm rather certain of it. Given the small physical size of the display, it will still look rather sharp. A piece of traditional LCD display of that physical size would only be about 640x480. So "rivals the resolution of a traditional laptop display" does not conflict with the OLPC XO having a blurry 200 dpi display. It's blurry for 1200x900, but not for a 7.5" diagonal chunk of screen space. The DCON chip does a blur that replaces half of each pixel's value with the average value of the four neighbors. After that, 2/3 of the color values at each location are thrown away. In some directions, images containing wavelengths near and below 3 pixels will have very strong color artifacts; software developers need to avoid images (including fonts) that will trigger this problem. 400x300 comes from the frequency cut-off needed to avoid severe color fringes. Actually it's a bit worse; 300x225 would be a safer bet. 600x450 comes from the frequency cut-off caused by the DCON chip. 693x520 comes from the total number of single-color elements. AlbertCahalan 03:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps better: blurry for 1200x900, yet sharp for the physical size. AlbertCahalan 03:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The NTSC/PAL comparison is purely about image quality, not implementation. It's a point of reference. The OLPC XO screen is gamut-limited, and will remain so until the white LED is replaced with separate red/green/blue LEDs. The OLPC XO screen has good positional control, yet the image is frequency-limited. Color changes can not be resolved as well as brightness changes. With all that, "like NTSC or PAL TV" is a rather good description. AlbertCahalan 03:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

In the sense that chrominance resolution is not as high as luminance resolution, the analogy holds to NTSC and PAL. But unlike these systems, you do not sacrifice luminance resolution for chrominance. Of course, all displays are frequency limited. Regarding the white point, this is a bit difficult because it varies somewhat from display to display--this is one of the places where tolerances were relaxed to reduce costs. Certainly a detailed analysis is in order, but I stand by my statement that the characterization of the display as blurry is a mischaracterization: "It's blurry for 1200x900, but not for a 7.5" diagonal chunk of screen space." The fact is, it is a 7.5" diagonal chuck of screen space, so by your own logic, it is not blurry. --Walter.bender 19:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You have that mostly backwards about sacrificing luminance resolution for chrominance. NTSC only steals a tiny bit for the color carrier. The OLPC XO dramatically loses luminance resolution, obviously via the blur ("swizzle") function and less obviously via wide spacing between lines of green pixels. (about 3/5 of the luminance info is carried in green) It's a 1200x900 chunk of screen space, so it is blurry. :-) It's even a tad blurry for a 7.5" chunk of screen space; modern DPI is now well over 100 on average. We could go by angular size of resolvable image features; it is still blurry because kids will sit closer to the screen than adults will sit from normal laptops. Angular size is kind of appropriate because otherwise a 1024x768 projector with 5mm pixels would always be blurry compared to an old CGA monitor, but going by addressable pixels is also appropriate because that is how the screen will be seen from software. People writing software need to know that they can't expect a 6x13 font to be all that readable in color mode, even if you do have the eyes of a kid. AlbertCahalan 22:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Enough BS, let's get numbers!

We need pictures from the real hardware. It would also be fun to get images from the publicly available screen emulator (a hacked Xephyr? a Google SoC project?) to see how good/bad the emulation is. I've included my two best guesses, obviously limited by the inability to express the brightness of a subpixel via a whole pixel. Note that the test images get scrambled by image scaling; only use them at their full 1200x900 size. They are marked as sRGB and thus should go direct to screen without any additional gamma adjustment. AlbertCahalan 04:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW, on the real hardware, please get pictures of: backlight+swizzle (color), neither (greyscale), swizzle only, and backlight only. AlbertCahalan 04:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Check the OLPC WIki's Hardware Page. --69.136.111.100 22:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like Swizzle8 is the better emulation. I'd like to work out how to show the image in proper fullscreen mode before taking more shots (this one was taken with the image in the browser), but let me know if there's any particular detail you'd like to see sooner. Note that the screen is very high res, and close-up shots don't give it justice. —Pengo 06:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Most interesting and easy would be a portrait-orientation image that includes the left portion of the measurement scale on the bottom edge and also includes the transition point in the upper-left area where undesired circles start to form. It may be best to move back a bit to avoid viewing angle problems. It may be best to take a picture of a larger area and then crop away the edges; the edges get kind of distorted, though you do need to watch out for the camera itself creating artifacts if you go back too far. BTW, thanks for the picture. AlbertCahalan 05:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

In case the camera interferes, you might just measure with a ruler. The very bottom markings, also found on the bottom right edge of the zone plate, indicate horizontal frequency. Radial markings are the same, in the mid-lower-left, with numbers from 2 to 9. I didn't leave room for the vertical markings; they are also the same, measured from the center. The inner text region is at 9 pixels/wave. Locate each undesired set of circles by these markings. Report the central location, edge location on the side with the larger pixel/wave number, colorfulness, and severity. Also, in each direction from the center, report the radial distance at which you can no longer make out the primary circles. For example, on a normal LCD I get faint unwanted grey circles at 2 pixels/wave (non-radial measurement) in directions left, left-up, up, right-up, and right. The clearly visible diameter is 2/3 the diameter of the central area; they fade away slowly. AlbertCahalan 06:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Mine arrived; it's as I predicted. The undesired circles to the upper-left are colored; the rest are not. All these measurements are by horizontal and vertical scales, not radial. At locations 6 pixels/wave and below, primarily in the upper-left direction, there are noticable artifacts. This indicates 400x300 resolution. In all main directions (45 degrees apart), there are strong artifacts at locations 4 pixels/wave and below. This indicates 600x450 resolution. At locations 3 pixels/wave and below, viewing the primary circles becomes fairly hopeless. This indicates 800x600 resolution. Probably the most reasonable thing to say is that half the resolution is lost, but it's worse for the special case of lines running from lower-left to upper-right. BTW, the web browser fonts are sized for about 300x225! Wikis are horribly difficult to use with such fat fonts. AlbertCahalan 05:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Mljmlj 23:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC) Mary Lou Jepsen: I've done the measurements on the display myself and have spent much of the last two years of my life designing, building and refining this display. I'm in process of publishing everything about this display including its astonishing resolution performance. The display is the first display I know of that employs something the video encoding experts have done for some time: the human visual system sees higher resolution in luminance (B&W) than chrominance (color): for example MPEG luminance resolution is 4X the chrominance resolution. In that I also added sunlight readability in B&W mode a key thing to understand is that that the ambient light level of the room changes the resolution of the display. The pixel has a reflective part that is B&W, and a transmissive part that is one color: red or green or blue. It should be that a red and a green and blue pixel combine to make a single full-color pixel. Thus the resolution should be 1200/sqrt(3) x 900/sqrt(3) or 693x520. But, when the room is totally dark the resolution given via standard method of determining display resolution is approximately 800x600 or about 133 dpi. I did these measurements a number of ways and am in process of writing them up for publication (some via straight fresnel patterns, other perceptual image detail tests) In a dark room the effect is akin to sub-pixel rendering - we see an improvement in resolution of ~33% via sub-pixel rendering.

With room lights on, an additional effect comes into play: the display has luminance (B&W) information at 200dpi in it's reflective mode, with the room lights on the display also reflects 200dpi in black and white. This increases the effective resolution to about XGA or 1024x768 when using test patterns to ascertain the display resolution. Finally, the laptop can be brought outside into bright sunlight and the screen is still viewable - now the color is barely visible (if the backlight is left on), but on the screen the 1200x900 200dpi resolution is seen crisply and clearly. - Mary Lou Jepsen Mljmlj 23:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I really hate to put it this way, but you'd have about the most biased opinion I can imagine. Try the zone plate image. The display is only 800x600 by the most forgiving eye. I think a fair observation puts the display somewhere in the 600x450 to 640x480 range. One could be less forgiving, and take note of the awful artifacts in the upper-left direction which indicate a 400x300 resolution. Note that the display controller fails to account for gamma (see bug #1017), which makes things noticably worse. There is no crisp and clear 200dpi in color mode, even in bright sunlight; one must not ignore the "swizzle" convolution. (which is in fact inadequate for stopping color artifacts) BTW, I do like the display. It makes the ClearType patent problem go away. Hardware patents aren't my problem; software patents are. AlbertCahalan 15:58, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

18.85.18.74 17:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC) Mary Lou Jepsen: You agree that the display can be 800x600 resolution in color. Great. Now, I have a task for you - bring your laptop into the sunlight. Put a high resolution pattern on it. Measure it. The resolution is 1200x900 = 200dpi in luminance channel only (Black, white and grey). Bring the laptop back inside. Look at the display under a microscope - count the pixels. Again there will be 1200x900 pixels. The pixels are square with dimensions of 0.127mm x 0.127. Verify this. This is not bias, opinion or anything but fact. If you see anything different - please send your laptop to me and I will personally inspect it and report to you what problems I find. I assume that it would be a software bug, it would be impossible for your laptop to have a different number of pixels than the thousands of other laptops we have already made. OLPC has designated a place to file a bug report at dev.laptop.org - it would be a more appropriate forum than here. Please kindly consider using a more appropriate forum. Mary Lou Jepsen 18.85.18.74 17:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking that there was anything wrong with either the display or software. Nobody expects it to be like a high-end laptop for that kind of price and power consumption. It turns out that there is a problem or two, which I will of course report in the proper place. (the gamma standard being ignored) The effective resolution is noticably better if one assumes that the display uses a gamma of 1.0 rather than sRGB. I'd love to have a try at patching the ASIC source (Verilog? VHDL? Whatever, I'll manage.) to fix some of the problems. I hope you accept help from us outsiders. AlbertCahalan 06:59, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Albert, it was exceptionally bad form for you to confront Mary Lou here. This page is for discussion of the article and nothing else, if you have questions take them to the OLPC Wiki they are more than willing to accomodate you there. Mary Lou, thank you for your detailed briefing on the display, I'm sure that this information will definitely make it onto the article page. --Basique 20:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me? Users Mljmlj and 18.85.18.74 confronted me. I was discussing an inaccuracy in the article. As far as I know, I am the first and only person to post reproducable measurements of this display. What, am I not allowed to disagree with a semi-famous person who designs nice computers for children? Are such people always right, such that testing their claims is off-limits? Resolution claims need to be backed by hard data that anybody can reproduce. This display is most similar to 693x520. It does worse in the direction of upper-left to lower-right, but better in the direction of upper-right to lower-left. I have provided a test pattern that you can use to see this for yourself. Beware that the display has a gamma error that will supposedly be fixed in a future revision; have your image display program assume the display is gamma 1.0 if you wish to exclude gamma-related errors from testing. Note that I'm not an OLPC-hater; I'm actually porting Tux Paint to it right now. AlbertCahalan 04:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

- I don't care if you're a hater or a lover Albert the title you chose for this sectional was confrontational. In case you are confused about what this page is for read the talkheader at the beginning. This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Children's Machine article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject. If you want to argue about defective hardware do it in the OLPC wiki's Hardware specification page. When you come back with hard data then please add it to the article. Going forward I will assume good faith on your part. --Basique 14:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)