The original XO OLPC laptop basically just began mass production, yet Negroponte & Co just unvieled the next generation XO laptop today at OLPC’s Global Country Workshop. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte announced the futuristic looking new model sporting dual touchscreen displays in a smaller tablet folding book-style design.

As you can see from the video and the pictures on Laptopmag.com, the XO 2.0 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.

According to Negroponte, the second generation of the XO is scheduled to be released in 2010. One of the reasons he is announcing it so early this time around is that he hopes that other manufacturers will actually copy his idea. (via Gizmodo)

After years of conflict and strife, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have worked out a deal that will see Windows XP on the OLPC.

According to the NYTimes,

Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.

“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”

The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.

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A virtual uprising that broke out among developers questioning One Laptop Per Child’s commitment to open-source software has prompted an official from the nonprofit effort to play peacemaker.

Doubts about OLPC’s commitment to open-source software surfaced after Chairman Nicholas Negroponte criticized Sugar, the user interface that currently works with the Linux-based XO laptops. Negroponte asked developers to extend Sugar’s development to Windows, which will make XO laptops more appealing to customers.

Without touching on the subject of Sugar for Windows, Kim Quirk, director of the technical team at OLPC, on Monday quelled any notion of OLPC abandoning open source.

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Linpus has developed and released a new mobile Linux distro aimed at low-cost PCs like UMPC’s, Asus Eee PC, OLPC, Classmate PC, MID and other consumer mobile devices. Linpus Linux Lite is designed to run smoothly and reliably on a lower-end hardware with processing power as low as 500 MHz, 128MB of DRAM and 512MB of storage space.

It features a UI optimized for 4 - 7″ inch screens, power management on lower grade hardware, a simple and advanced user mode and built in networking support for Wi-Fi, WiMAX, HSDPA, HSUPA, Ethernet, BT, IR and UPnP. You can grab a live CD here.

Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of both the MIT Media Lab and the non-profit One Laptop Per Child, delivered the last keynote speech of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting.

The talk focused on the groundbreaking work of the OLPC, which has managed to deliver thousands of $187 laptops to children in the developing world. Negroponte ran through a list of the organization’s accomplishments, noting that they had half a million machines in their pipeline and that production had reached 110,000 units per month. The big key to large-scale adoption remains price going forward, and he promised big price drops in the coming years.

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Boston.com has a piece on the current state of OLPC orders, it noting that Peru has just signed up for 260,000 systems. Since the Give One Get One program began Nov. 12, the foundation has received about $2 million in orders every day, he said. That works out to 190,000 laptops total, with at least half donated to children in developing countries.

A company called Lagos Analysis Corporation has sent out a press release announcing a patent infringement lawsuit against the One Laptop Per Child project. “The patent infringement lawsuit was filed on November 22nd, 2007 as a result of OLPC’s willful infringement of LANCOR’s Nigeria Registered Design Patent #RD8489 and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes for use in the XO Laptops.” The patent in question relates to physical multilingual keyboard technology.

LANCOR is seeking substantial damages as well as a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from continuing to unlawfully manufacture, sell, distribute or offer for sale the XO Laptop, and any other products infringing on the RD8489 and using the illegally acquired keyboard driver source codes. (via LWN)

The One Laptop Per Child program is now taking XO laptop orders for its Give One Get One program.

For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and the other sent to you. At the moment orders are only being taken in the US and Canada. $200 of the ‘donation’ is even tax-deductable. Also, for all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access. OLPC hopes to ship all of the orders in time for the holidays, but is not guaranteeing any specific timing.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer, which uses a version of Linux, might soon be available with Windows. According to a Reuters report, a Microsoft corporate vice president has said that the software giant is working to adapt Windows XP for the low-cost XO laptop.

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David Pouge of the New York Times has published a pretty positive review of the XO OLPC Laptop:

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

The computer, if you hadn’t already guessed, is the fabled “$100 laptop” that’s been igniting hype and controversy for three years.