Nicholas? [LWN.net]

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:44 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
In reply to: Nicholas? by jwb
Parent article: Changes at OLPC

Durability is important, but in general a known field as opposed to bringing down the cost of all the components, etc. You can buy a durable laptop from Panasonic, but targeted to a different niche.

But the task you'd imagine that has been set for OLPC, given the concept pictures of version 2, is to create the bleeding-edge of laptop technology.

I don't see how a haptic LCD replacing a keyboard is going to be very durable, even if there's a nice sheet of lexan on the top.

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Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:56 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

but the durab;e laptops from panasonic are substantially more expensive than the normal ones, while the OLPC machines are very comparable in cost, if not cheaper, remember the G1G1 program has you paying double the cost, there is the 'give many' program that allows you to buy 100+ at a time for a cost of ~$250 each, so that is a better 'real' cost for the machines.

I think the XO version 2 that is being worked on will be a disaster, so I'm not at all worried about it being delayed. that being said, I hope that this doesn't hurt Pixel Qi (the company Mary Lou Jespen founded) which was doing the development much, I want to see that screen available on other systems ;-)

Durable

Posted Jan 7, 2009 21:16 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

There isn't anything about the materials necessary for durable laptops that would make them expensive. You don't need titanium, there are lots of strong plastics. I bet Panasonic makes a significant mark-up on those laptops.

Bruce

Durable

Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:54 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

I may agree with you just a little. The physical cost of the additional components is not extremely high. But there is some additional cost and extra markup on top of that is a good business decision.

There is extra stuff in there that costs more money.

Part of that extra stuff is the shock protection for the interior. You don't want capacitors falling off the board surface, for example. Cheap stuff does this by covering everything in epoxy but that makes it effectively unservicable. I don't actually know what the Panasonic Toughbook does for this problem.

There is also a fancy shock cushion for the hard drive or replacing the drive with an SSD. Either option costs more than standard.

Two things that justify extra markup is rarity and testing.

Because there is some increased cost associated with toughness, fewer customers will buy the product so the price must be even higher to compensate for fewer sales. Those customers that will buy it are looking for tough durability specifically and so the price may be higher because its a hard to find quality.

Testing for toughness means even more destructive tests on samples. I doubt you see Sony dropping many Vaio laptops onto concrete floors. But if toughness is one of your primary selling points, you will want to make sure your product is staying tough by testing a few out of every thousand.

Durable

Posted Jan 9, 2009 5:55 UTC (Fri) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]

>>Two things that justify extra markup is rarity and testing.

>>Because there is some increased cost associated with toughness, fewer customers will buy the product so the price must be even higher to compensate for fewer sales. Those customers that will buy it are looking for tough durability specifically and so the price may be higher because its a hard to find quality.

I think rarity is bigger factor than testing.

However I think also that something aimed at the durability market is also likely going to be treated far worse and have higher warranty claims.

That being the case I'm sure they are making higher profit margins on them. There are plenty of alternative materials that are cheap.

Tough plastics, Aluminium instead of magnesium and titanium.

Personally I'd love to see the tough models become the standard and the current models become the lightweights :p I'm sure plenty of other folks would like more durable laptops to be the standard.