Talk:OLPC Nigeria/Galadima

Carla - This report is wonderful. We love your strategy, stories, and photos. It feels like being there and seeing the children's excitement and passion for learning in a new way. Post more like this one! Cheers, your friends from World Wide Workshop, NYC.

Power shortages reported

(apologies: I drafted a comment like this, but lost it somewhere in the wiki..)

I recently read a news report [1]about power shortages at the Galadima School. I have seen general information elsewhere in the OLPC wiki about alternative energy sources, but wanted to know if you had a more specific response to this article. I detected an implication that energy problems were not foreseen by OLPC. I'd like to blog about your project, so I'd appreciate any comments you have. Thanks.

Tom 03:45, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

We have very much anticipated power shortages, which is why we have put so much effort into making a laptop that requires an order-of-magnitude less power than a conventional laptop. This means that the laptop can be powered by hand, pedal, solar, etc. This is also an argument against the conventional wisdom of distributing conventional laptops, used computers, and desktop machines that can be made less expensive than a laptop. (There are numerous other reasons for the laptop design as well, including environmental robustness.) All of that said, we have not yet begun mass production of the human-power or solar-power options, so there is currently a shortage of these devices. --Walter 08:57, 2 July 2007 (EDT)