Status of the OLPC project

It seems the One Laptop Per Child project which aims to provide a very cheap, child friendly laptop powered by Linux for each child in the third world countries is making steady progress. The design of the laptop has been finalized and a couple of prototypes have already found its way into the hands of a select few in the media who have come out with a review of the laptop.

To the uninitiated, the One Laptop Per Child project popularly known as OLPC is the brain child of Nicholas Negroponte who is also the chairman of this project. The aim is to provide a laptop to each child in developing nations so that they can harness the power of IT to further their education. As of now, the laptop will cost a little more than $100 but in a couple of years, the price is expected to come down to say $50.

The OLPC website states that the "laptop will be Linux-based, with a dual-mode display, both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor (As of now, it is actually 377 MHz AMD processor) and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data".

The manner in which the power is to be generated is yet to be finalized. But it seems a lot of ideas are being generated.

James Tuner has compiled a detailed report of the status of the OLPC laptop prototype after taking it for a test drive. He has also provided photos of the final prototype which is named "XO". He notes that (as of now) the power for the laptop will be generated using a "Yo-Yo like device that can be pulled by hand or foot" instead of a hand crank. And the "peak power consumption will be around 5 Watts for high-demand media applications" with it falling down to a mere 350 Milli-watts for just keeping the mesh network alive.

A month back, Håkon Wium Lie of Opera Software had shared his thoughts on OLPC machine, where he explained how he installed and ran the Opera web browser on this laptop.

A number of developing countries have signed up for this unique project which aims to sell the laptops only to governments which in turn will be distributing the laptops to the children in schools. But unfortunately, the Indian government has not shown as much interest in the project stating that this money could be better utilized else where. As of now, India is taking a wait and watch attitude. Perhaps we Indians could see this laptop once the price comes down to an expected $50 in a couple of years time from now.