Deployment Guide/Workbook
This is a workbook for estimating the cost of a large-scale deployment of One Laptop Per Child. It is a working document that reflects lessons learned from our initial pilots and deployments. Additional ideas will be incorporated as we learn from each other.
It is available in Microsoft Excel format: Deployment_Workbook.xls
Contents
Introduction
The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Deployment Workbook contains six worksheets. There are two worksheets for use in planning: Country and School. The Country worksheet takes information about overall number of laptops and rough percentages of schools and provides a rough estimate of the costs. The School worksheet takes detailed information about a particular school and provides an estimate of the required infrastructure, power, and costs given different power scenarios.
These estimated costs depend on the accuracy of the system component costs specified in the Laptop Costs, Program Costs, and Other Costs worksheets. While the defaults provided are based on commercially available components, these must be updated to reflect current and local prices for these components before using this workbook to estimate costs.
How to use the workbook
- Determine local prices for items such as generators, school servers,
wireless access points, wireless switches, the cost of running a Cat5 network cable or power cable for 30m in a typical school, and update the Other Costs worksheet.
- If estimating at the country level, the Program Costs worksheet should also be updated.
- At this point, you can estimate costs across the entire deployment using the Country Expenses Estimate worksheet.
- If you want to see the estimated cost of a single school, and compare the costs of different methods of powering the laptops, use the Individual School Expenses Estimate worksheet.
Workbook Description
Country Expenses Estimate
Individual School Expenses Estimate
This worksheet calculates the estimated expenses for a particular school, illustrating the costs of different power generation and distribution schemes. It has two sections. The first contains six fields that describe the school, the remainder of the worksheet shows estimated power usage and costs.
To be filled by the Country
Number of laptops in the school - The total number of XO laptops deployed at a school, including teachers and students.
Internet Connectivity - How the school will be connected to the Internet. Allowed options are:
- DSL - A DSL broadband connection
- VSAT - A satellite connection
- GSM - A cellular telephone data connection, GPRS, EDGE, or other (3G)
- Other - An alternative local method may be specified
- None - no Internet connection will be provided
The local costs of each of these options, in terms of money and power, must be specified in the Other Costs worksheet.
Laptop Usage - The number of times a laptop will be charged in a day. To specify a usage model where laptops are continuously connected (both charging and operating) throughout the day, specify 2. Fractional values --- such as 0.5, indicating one charge every two days --- may be specified.
Infrastructure Usage -
How much storage -
Hours of sunlight per day - The number of hours per day that the school receives sunlight acceptable for generating solar power.
