At the Consumer Electronics Show, Charbax made a great video of One Laptop Per Child CTO Edward J. McNierney talking about the XO-1.75 laptop. Ed says that XO-1.75 was designed around an ARM system on chip, the Marvell's 1GHz Armada single core processor. The XO-1.75 will have 1GB RAM and 4GM Flash storage.
But unlike previously reported, the stock XO-1.75 will NOT have a touchscreen. The XO-1.75 is exactly the same form factor as the XO-1. Charbax has heard there will be 1000 units of XO-1.75 with touchscreen for developers to prepare education activities for for the XO-3.
Ed says that Sugar Learning System works faster on ARM than on VIA or AMD Geode, and the XO-1.75 runs a full, standard Fedora ARM distribution. In fact, he says that the XO-1.75 fully supports Android and with its Open Firmware, can also boot any OS via the SD Card slot - even Windows when Microsoft makes the ARM version.
Going forward, OLPC will support both VIA and ARM chipsets - the XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 - and its up to country buyers to choose which chipset they prefer.
Recent Comments
Real Windows NT/XP/7 on ARM?
I really doubt it. Maybe if Windows is split into a kernel and distribution on top of it, say Windows CE (Series 7 etc) + Wine + Userspace. But then they need a (Very) good Windows CE kernel.
My question would be: Do they still have the people with the know-how?
This article from The Register better articulates my doubts:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/11/windows_on_arm/
The UI issue is the bigger uncertainty. You'll note that while Apple retained much of the Mac OS X API for its iGadgets, it developed a completely new shell and UI framework. Microsoft hasn't said whether it too will develop a new shell and programming API specifically for these ARM mobile devices, or whether it will go for compatibility, and allow developers to port their apps more easily – perhaps kludging the UI elements – so you get the "old" style Win UI but with bigger buttons, for example. The lack of a definitive statement may be because Microsoft can't answer the first question – what we'll do with them – with any certainty.
It was too good to be true...
I thought it was weird considering reported 2watt power consumption of the unit...
When OLPC comes up with 2.0 model, I really think they shouldn't change the formfactor but upgrade with higher performance adn the tablet.