$100 Laptops Ready To Start Production

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization says it is now ready to mass produce their $100 laptops. They have instructed their hardware producers to ramp up production, and hope to have many computers ready for sale in October of 2007.

The computers are meant for poor children in emerging nations. OLPC says the main purpose of the computers is educational, but they will also be able to connect to the internet through WiFi. OLPC is hoping to connect children all over the world through the tiny green and white 1GB computers.

The computer is a pretty stripped down model compared to the computers we in the developed nations are used to. They really wouldn't be able to perform modern office functions, but they should be very functional for the educational and communication needs of these children.

The computers have a rugged plastic water-proof case and have been engineered to be very energy-efficient. They don't even need to have electricity available, since they are designed to run off solar-power, a foot-pump or a string-pull charger. The machines use a stripped-down version of open source software.

The machines have been successfully tested in Nigeria and Brazil. Curently they cost $176, but OPLC believes that with mass production and bulk sales they believe they will get the cost down to $100 (they need to sell 3 million to get this done).

Even though the machines were meant for sale to the governments of emerging nations, there is now talk of selling the machines to the public at large. One idea is to require the consumer to buy two (with the second going to a child in a developing country). So far, orders have come from the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Thailand, Libya and Pakistan.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and I hope that governments and charitable organizations all over the world will purchase millions of them and put them into the hands of poor children. It's just a fact of life today that both computer and educational literacy are a must if we expect these people to join the modern world.

I hope they sell many millions of the little green and white machines.