Featured Story: Laptops To Change The World

Sunday, 22 July 2007 18:00

Laptops To Change The World

OLPC's XO laptop

OLPC’s XO laptops are sold to governments and issued to children by their schools.  The Linux-based machines are rugged and sufficiently energy efficient that they can be powered by hand-cranking.  Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection.  XO’s operating system and software are completely free and open-source. OLPC’s founder is Nicholas Negroponte, also the founder of MIT’s media lab.

In early 2002, Negroponte provided connected laptops to 20 children in a small, remote Cambodian village.  The machines were intended for the children’s individual use at school, at home, and in the community.  The results were enlightening:  the children and their families quickly found multiple uses for the machines and taught themselves to navigate the Internet.

In January 2005 Negroponte emailed his friend Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD, his idea for a $100 laptop for the poor children of the world.  Ruiz immediately replied that AMD would be delighted to take a lead role.  Within weeks, News Corp. and Google also joined as founding members of the newly formed OLPC.  Negroponte presented a non-functioning mock-up of the $100 laptop later that month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a gathering of the political, economic, and cultural elite of the world.  The machine was enthusiastically accepted, prompting New York Times writer John Markoff to dub Negroponte “the Johnny Appleseed of the digital era.”

The first meeting of OLPC corporate partners was held in May of 2005.  Within two months, more than 50 countries had inquired about the laptop, and some 20 of those inquiries came from heads of state.  In December 2005 OLPC announced that Quanta Computers, the world's largest maker of laptops, had signed on as ODM for the laptop. 

Beta 1 production began in November 2006.  Negroponte says 7,000 of the computers are now in use and he expects a total of 1,000,000 to be in use by the end of this year.  Negroponte, who believes that within five years OLPC could account for 20% of world computer production, is careful to point out that OLPC is not about computers, but about education.  "Our goal is to get laptops into kids' hands," he says, to make them a "seamless part of a child's life."

OLPC also expects its XO laptop to get cheaper as production ramps up.  Earlier this month, an Engadget (www.engadget.com) post noted that OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen reportedly expects the price to dip to just $50 by 2009 thanks to cuts in the price of the display.

Negroponte has told business leaders that a retail version of the project's inexpensive computer could be available by September 2007, ahead of schedule.  The retail units will reportedly be sold to consumers with a charitable offering as part of the package.  Also last week, Intel joined the OLPC program.  Corporate members now include AMD, Brightstar, Chi Lin, eBay, Google, Intel, Marvell, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, Red Hat and SES Astra.

Smith & Associates salutes the members of OLPC and their efforts to put technology in the hands of children around the world; offering children the means and opportunity to advance their education, enhance their way of life, improve their community, and embrace the wider world.

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