$5 for OLPC Software on a USB Stick

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The OLPC Foundation has been tireless in its efforts to educate children in developing nations through low cost laptops. Now former president of the non-profit, Walter Bender is trying something different.

Bender left OLPC to found Sugar Labs, a company which promotes Sugar, the software used on OLPC machines. TechnologyReview reports that Sugar Labs will today announce Sugar on a Stick. For $5, you get the 40 applications running on all XO laptops on a 1GB USB stick (including Read, Write, Paint and Etoys) and the ability to turn old, clapped out computers into useful educational tools.

"What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost," says Bender. "It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines."

TechnolgyReview also reports that this summer, Sugar Labs will deploy the software at the Gardner Pilot Academy, an elementary school in Boston, under a $20,000 grant from the Gould Charitable Foundation.

Read the full story here.

Jane McEntegart
21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • zzz_b
    I do not think those "decrepit old machines" can boot from a USB stick!
    Reply
  • Hanin33
    sounds good... power to the people!
    Reply
  • falchard
    Hate to agree but I agree, its a bad method to boot from a USB disk. Considering the age, you would be on USB 1.0 which has slow transfer speeds and may not be acceptable to do the read/write operations of a boot HDD.
    Reply
  • computabug
    Why do hobos get all the great deals and we're stuck with cheap ass stupid american government systems?
    Reply
  • yourtechsupport
    Well, you could always install it as the OS.
    I can't find a link to this $5 thing. I'd gladly donate a little bit of change, hardware or no.
    Reply
  • Regulas
    Total crap, if the rig can run 2000, be it barely, why stick this rubbish on it. Download and install for free, Linux of your flavour. Netbbok Remix mabe iof you want the "Simple" interface.
    Reply
  • hemelskonijn
    First a computer that age will boot from a usb drive though this depends on the firmware (BIOS) of the computer.
    Second usb 1.1 is fast enough to get about the same performance as you

    would get from the OLPC laptop and if not those computers do have pci slots and for about 7-15 usd you can buy yourself an awesome pci USB 2.0 upgrade.

    Last RAM costs nothing or near to nothing who is to say they wont run the complete system from ram (on the OLPC the software takes only 256 megs so it should be able to run from a ramdrive).

    In both solutions i just came up with you can use a Pentium 2 system do a RAM upgrade (512Mb DDR is about 20 USD if you look hard) and or plug in a 7 to 10 USD USB PCI card.
    Total cost do make a donated system viable is below 40 bucks!
    Reply
  • blarneypete
    But what I really want to know is: Will it blend?
    Reply
  • joefriday
    9125715 said:
    First a computer that age will boot from a usb drive though this depends on the firmware (BIOS) of the computer.
    Second usb 1.1 is fast enough to get about the same performance as you

    would get from the OLPC laptop and if not those computers do have pci slots and for about 7-15 usd you can buy yourself an awesome pci USB 2.0 upgrade.

    Last RAM costs nothing or near to nothing who is to say they wont run the complete system from ram (on the OLPC the software takes only 256 megs so it should be able to run from a ramdrive).

    In both solutions i just came up with you can use a Pentium 2 system do a RAM upgrade (512Mb DDR is about 20 USD if you look hard) and or plug in a 7 to 10 USD USB PCI card.
    Total cost do make a donated system viable is below 40 bucks!
    1. No Pentium II system used DDR ram.
    2. I also greatly contest your claim the USB booting is supported on old Pentium/K6/Pentium II or even Pentium III motherboards. Even socket 478 and Socket A motherboards rarely had support for that function.
    3. Old motherboards have ram limitations. For example, the i810 and i815 series only supported 512MB total ram (2x256). The even older Ali Alladin V only supported 256MB ram. The 440BX allowed up to 768MB. You can't go shoving 512MB ram sticks in there all willy-nilly and expect it to just work.
    Reply
  • aspireonelover
    computabugWhy do hobos get all the great deals and we're stuck with cheap ass stupid american government systems?Hey, we're here to help em with what ever they need. Man kindness.
    Reply