A few years back, Nicholas Negroponte and Mary Lou Jepsen, both of the MIT Media Lab, founded the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) venture, with the vision of developing a "$100 laptop" that could easily be obtained by many of the world’s children. The result was the XO laptop, said to be the lowest-cost, lowest-power, and most environmentally-friendly laptop ever made. Manufactured by Taiwanese company Quanta Computer, current pricing is about $188, with the $100 price still a goal - and possible if the market grows to over 50 million units by 2010, as some predict.

Aldo Cugnini
Analyst

Jepsen contributed several key technologies for the device, including a sunlight-readable display and an ultra-low power management system. Instead of using subtractive color filters, the display uses a plastic diffraction grating and lenses on the rear of the LCD to illuminate the colored subpixels.

The original goals of the laptop project included minimal power consumption, with a design target of 2-3 W, minimal production cost, a target of US$100 MSRP, a "cool" look, e-book functionality, and an open source OS with free software. The product was envisioned as part of a worldwide social program, with governments and large corporations purchasing the devices and then giving them away to children in developing nations. Last year, the XO was available in the United States and Canada for a short time for the Christmas season, through a "Give 1 Get 1" program. This allowed consumers to purchase two systems for $399, with one sent to a child in a developing nation.

Ironically, one barrier to the widespread acceptance of the XO laptop has apparently been the Linux operating system. According to a recent New York Times article, countries have been reluctant to buy machines that do not run Windows. "The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases," said Negroponte, "and those people are much more comfortable with Windows." But last week, Microsoft and OLPC apparently reached an agreement to offer Windows on the laptops - a move that would add about $3 in licensing cost. However, the agreement is not exclusive - OLPC can still sell a Linux-only version, or even one that runs both operating systems.

Competitors are emerging, too. Intel’s World Ahead Program has developed the Classmate PC, with 7-inch LCD, LED BLU, 256MB RAM and 1GB flash. The unit runs either Linux or Windows. Critics, however, say the Classmate consumes 10 times the power of the XO, has 1/3 the Wi-Fi range, and can’t be used in broad daylight, as the XO can. Hong-Kong based Bestlink Electronics Limited has also introduced the Alpha 400, a 7", 700g mini laptop running Linux with pre-installed XIP Word and XIP Table, said to be compatible with Microsoft Word and Excel. With 128MB RAM and 1GB flash memory, the PC is also aimed at kids or teenagers, but is not connected to a social program. Pricing is US$165.00 FOB Hong Kong at a quantity of 100 units.

With countries like Peru, Uruguay and Mexico making the largest commitments so far for the Quanta XO, one still has to wonder how much funding is available to put these PCs into the laps of underprivileged kids. Nonetheless, this could be a worthwhile long-term investment. Take one small but encouraging example, as told by author Tom Friedman in a 2004 New York Times Op-Ed:

Abraham George, an Indian who made it big in high-tech America, went back to India with a mission: to start a privately financed boarding school that would take India’s most deprived children and prove that if you gave them access to the same technologies and education that have enabled other Indians to thrive in globalization, they could, too. Friedman asked the 8-year-olds what they wanted to be. Their answers were: "an astronaut," "a doctor," "a pediatrician," "a poetess," "physics and chemistry," "a scientist and an astronaut," "a surgeon," "a detective," "an author." Looking at these kids, George said, "They are the ones who have to do well for India to succeed."

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