Billed as the ‘$100 laptop,’ the aim is to transform education
Peter Hum
Province
OTTAWA — A cutting-edge “$100 laptop” computer, which is intended to transform education for the world’s poor, will be sold to North Americans — at a heftier price and with a philanthropic catch.
Canadian and U.S. consumers will have to spend $399 US buying one — with another to be donated to a child in the developing world.
The One Laptop Per Child Foundation, a non-profit organization, is to announce today the philanthropic campaign running from Nov. 12 to 26.
The first OLPC laptop, a green-and-white model, is to begin production in November with 120,000 units to be made by the end of the year, said OLPC spokesman George Snell.
While the machine is still referred to as the “$100 laptop,” that figure for now remains a marketing slogan and a target.
The OLPC Foundation’s larger plan is to sell computers in bulk to governments, which would provide the units at no cost to schoolchildren. The OLPC website says that Rwanda, Uruguay, Libya and Nigeria have expressed interest in bulk orders.
A portion of the cost of the computers will be tax deductible. Orders may be placed through xogiving.org or 1-866-X0-GIVING.
The XO was designed as a child-friendly device for use in the Third World. It can be powered by pull cords, solar panels or hand cranks and operate for 12 hours on one battery charge. It is water-resistant and its screen can be read in direct sunlight.
The machine comes with a built-in video camera and custom, open-source software for making music, creating art, playing games, browsing the web and word processing.
The OLPC Foundation, based in Cambridge, Mass., was founded by Nicholas Negroponte, who also founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.
© The Vancouver Province 2007