Regardless of where you stand on Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child effort, there is no denying the attraction of the product this nonprofit has developed for distribution to needy children around the world.
Negroponte had several units on display last week at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Information Technology Conference where he gave an update on the ambitious effort, and the tech professionals in attendance couldn’t keep their hands off them.
The bright green units – which will be sold to governments for about $100 – are about the size of a textbook, have a bright color screen, a rubberized chicklet keyboard, dual built-in Wi-Fi antennas and a user interface called Sugar that is intuitive and will greatly appeal to youngsters.
Negroponte said 5,000 laptops have come off the assembly line and by December the lines will be churning out 1 million per month. That makes OLPC a powerhouse from the get-go, given that collectively laptop manufacturers worldwide produce about 5 million units per month.
And apparently that fact isn’t lost on the companies that are in the business to make money. Intel has developed an alternative $250 laptop called Classmate that runs Windows or Linux. OLPC’s XO laptop is based on an AMD processor and runs Linux.
Asked about that competition Negroponte said, “When someone is selling something below cost in competition with you it’s called dumping, and when you’re the one taking that approach you call it forward pricing. What Intel is doing is predatory – we know what its costs are – and doesn’t benefit the children OLPC is trying to help. Intel should be ashamed of itself.”
The existence of the Classmate – which doesn’t feature the mesh-network support that will enable children with XOs to interact, the specially designed user interface or alternative ways to power the unit – might be behind OLPC’s decision to seek alternative funding methods in case big deals with Third World governments don’t come through.
Negroponte said he is talking to developed countries about buying devices for distribution in less-fortunate nations, and is even considering selling XOs in the United States for $300, with the understanding that that price funds the delivery of another unit somewhere else in the world.
Whether or not you believe a laptop will do a child in a Third World nation much good, when you pick up the device it is immediately clear that any child that gets his hands on one will be spellbound. That can only be good.
