Nick Negroponte off his rocker

Nick Negroponte, creator of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, is officially nuts. His new reference design for the second generation OLPC is a dual-screen laptop, with one screen being touch-sensitive and sporting haptic feedback.

Has he not witnessed the weak reception that the BlackBerry Storm received (the only device with a comparable haptic touch-screen keyboard)?

From a usability standpoint, the standard hardware keyboard is where it’s at. A touchscreen keyboard is slower, more expensive, and a pain to use, period.

The first generation OLPC failed because it took too long to become available, and because a slew of competition (from netbooks like the ASUS EEE PC) came out of the woodwork. The fact that competition sprung up is arguably a win for OLPC, whose goal was to get more computers in kids’ hands. Still, the fact that more people chose other netbooks instead of the OLPC shows how unnecessary the OLPC program is. Now that there are an adequate number of cheap netbooks on the market, shouldn’t OLPC just shut down, having already accomplished their goal?

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