OLPC Laptops Will Ship Early 2007

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Looks like the $100 laptops are going to start rolling out in the first quarter of 2007 according to PC Advisor.

The OLPC initiative is aimed at ensuring school children in developing countries keep up with their peers in modern nations by putting a laptop PC able to wirelessly access the Internet into their hands. The founders of the OLPC group hope the programme keeps people in poor nations from being left behind in the digital age. The $100 laptop PC concept has also prompted companies, including Intel, to start creating lower cost notebooks for developing countries.

It is already estimated that up to 10m laptops will be shipped with orders already confirmed in each of Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand.

The laptops will come pretty much barebones and will use Linux as their OS (you’d hardly expect Microsoft to give up 10m copies of Vista now would you?). The laptops are to be produced in Taiwan and will be sold off to various governments who will distribute the laptops on a “One Laptop Per Child” basis (hence OLPC).

More on the proposed laptop, The Children’s Machine, here at Wikipedia.

Comments

7 responses to “OLPC Laptops Will Ship Early 2007”

November 2, 2006

Pavlos

The $100 laptop concept is amazing, and it is good news to hear it is actually happening. One may say we need to give food and water – not laptops, but they don’t realize that a proper education and access to information is what will give children in developing countries a chance to better their own lives and those of other people in their communities. Education is not temporary aid, it is something that can truly change the world. It is empowerment.

On another note, I hear low cost mini-laptops will be hitting commercial vendors soon as well, as a result of “we now know it doesn’t really cost that much”.
November 2, 2006

Pinoy Stupid

It’s a nice laptop. It looks like it’s strictly for kids. I wonder if they sell to adults too. I need for mobile blogging. And IM. LOL.
November 2, 2006

Ken McGuire

Cheaper than picking yourself up a smart phone anyway!
November 2, 2006

Sean

Wonder can you pick these up normally?? Would/will something like this be introduced to developed countries schools? Sure beats the price of school books
November 2, 2006

Pavlos

No, these are made exclusively for school in developing countries, they are ordered by and shipped to these governments.

However, other’s are developing similar solutions (including Microsoft). I agree they would be ideal for mobile blogging and communications. It really isn’t that hard to build a similar machine running on special Linux distros with minimal requirements and no hard disk (flash used instead).

Also, if there could be production for a UMPC (ultra mobile pc – see Microsoft’s Origami project) at the volume the 100$ laptop is being produced, prices could be as low as $100 to $250, and even at $300 it would still beat the current prices for laptop computers and tablet PCs.
November 3, 2006

Yooeui

It truly is a wonderful project. I agree completely with Pavlos that the education and access to information is more important to a young student in the poor nations than buying $100 worth of food for him/her.

With the advent of high capacilty flash memories doing away with the laptop HD is now a reality. Hope this project stimulates the rest of the industry to develop lighter yet just as competet laptops for the commercial market. Woiuldn’t it be nice to see a project for the have-nots helping the haves to develp a product that makes sense?
November 7, 2006

Dave

I agree great project, well done to OLPC and the community. On the OLPC wiki at laptop.org there was a suggestion by a user to have a selling model marketed at contributors, to sell at double the price, to allow for ever laptop sold, one would be made avaiable to a child. I would support such a system. And it could give more units away to places which governments could not afford such systems on behalf of buyers. I would prefer to pay double, then to pay $150 – $200 for a simular product for a open product which I may contribute, then to a off the shelf product with proprietary software.