The OLPC project has just launched OLPC USA: XO-1 laptop sales at $400 per computer in a “Give 1 Get 1″ program:
Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops – one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home. The devices will reportedly ship before the late December holidays.
The vaunted “$100 laptop” that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers dreamed up for international schoolchildren is becoming a slightly more distant concept. Leaders of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child that was spun out of MIT acknowledged Friday that the devices would cost $188 if mass production, expected to begin this fall, were to start now. The last price the nonprofit had announced was $176; it described $100 as a long-term goal.
At the keynote for the recent UX Week conference in Washington, DC, designers from the OLPC project and Pentagram Design gave a live demonstration of the laptop’s Sugar user interface, including a “zoom” spatial navigation system and its extensive collaboration tools. Using a handheld video camera to relay the screens of four on-stage laptops to the audience, presenters showed Sugar running smoothly on actual XO hardware.
The economist.com has published a review of the OLPC:
The $100 laptop is fast becoming a reality
BACK at the dawn of the personal-computer era, in the late 1970s, millions of future programmers around the world got their first taste of writing software by using an ingenious little computer that cost less than $100 (about $240 in today’s money). [...]
In the sweep of its ambition, Mr Negroponte’s pet project, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), is remarkably similar to the thinking behind the original ZX80—giving inquisitive but economically deprived children the chance to feel the exhilaration of computer-based learning.
The One Laptop Per Child Project and Intel have put their differences aside, at least for now, as Intel agrees to take a seat on the OLPC Board of Directors. The new “peace” between Intel and OLPC will also involve the project receiving some funding from Intel, and according to a statement, “Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content.”
“In a move going largely unnoticed by developers, the OLPC project now requires all submissions to be hosted in the RedHat Fedora project. While this may not seem like a big deal, the implications are interesting. First, contributors have to sign the Fedora Project Individual Contributor License Agreement. By being forced to submit contributions to the Fedora repository they automatically fall under the provisions of US export law. So, no OLPC for Cuba, Syria and the like. Ever.”
Nicholas Negroponte and his OLPC project was features on 60 minutes last night. 60 Minutes is a large US sunday news show. Portions of the profile include remarks by Negroponte that Intel should be ashamed of themselves for trying to undercut the OLPC.
Co-Founder and Chairman of the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nicholas Negroponte shows off the new ‘One Hundred Dollar Laptop’ during a media conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in this file photo taken Saturday Jan. 28, 2006. One of the most ambitious aspects of the ‘$100 laptop’ project for schoolchildren in developing countries is the machines’ open-source software platform, designed to be intuitive to kids. That’s why many people were taken aback last week when the founder of the nonprofit laptop project, Nicholas Negroponte, announced that buyers of the machine will be able to add Windows, the proprietary software from Microsoft Corp. that open-source adherents love to despise.
According to Walter Bender, president of Software and Content at OLPC, there is no agreement in place between OLPC and Microsoft to offer XO laptops with any version of Windows. Bender also indicated that Microsoft has not contacted OLPC regarding its $3 software bundling program, nor have any governments requested that the XO be outfitted with Windows. In short, there is no existing collaboration between Microsoft and OLPC aimed at outfitting the XO laptop with Windows.
“We are a free and open-source shop. We have no one from OLPC working with Microsoft on developing a Windows platform for the XO. MS doesn’t get any special treatment from OLPC,” Bender told Ars.
For those who haven’t made their plans for the summer yet: the One Laptop Per Child Nepal organization is looking for people to head over to the country and help get the project going.
“Right now we have three full-time volunteer developers, all of them Nepali. We would love four (4) foreign volunteers to come work with us this summer in Kathmandu. We will pair each foreign volunteer with a Nepali intern. That
should bring our content strike force to 11 people. That would really help us to advance OLPC in Nepal.”
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September 23rd, 2007 by 
Ryan
The economist.com has published 
