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The One Laptop per Child project's XO laptop will switch to a Via processor as part of a general hardware refresh.

Generation 1.5 of the XO machine will have the same industrial design as the original model, but will use a Via C7-M processor, John Watlington, OLPC's vice president of hardware development, wrote in a post on Friday. Currently the XO, which is aimed at educational markets in developing countries, uses an AMD Geode processor.

"The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance," Watlington wrote. "In order to maximize compatibility with existing software, this refresh will continue with an x86 processor, using a chipset from Via."

XO Generation 1.5 will arrive in November, OLPC chief Nicholas Negroponte told ZDNet UK on Monday. He said the shift to the Via chip came about because AMD had discontinued its low-power processor.

Watlington said the refresh was separate from the "Gen 2.0" project, in which OLPC will switch to an ARM-based, instead of x86-based, processor. The first of the XO 2.0 laptops will launch in early 2011, Negroponte said.

In the XO Generation 1.5 refresh, the memory of the XO will be boosted from 256MB to 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM. Its flash storage will go up from 1GB to 4GB, with an option for 8GB.

The Via processor will have a clock range from 400MHz to 1GHz, resulting in power consumption of 1.5W to 5W, Watlington said. It will be integrated into the XO as part of Via's new VX855 chipset, which will also boost the XO's audio and video performance, he added.

While the revised XO will use the existing display, the OLPC is working with screen designer PixelQi to improve its brightness and efficiency, Watlington wrote. The new machine will also require an update to the OLPC software in order to support the new hardware, he said.

Watlington said early versions of the new hardware will be released for driver development at the end of May, with more prototypes coming out for software development and testing "around the end of August".

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Whitebox vendors in the Asia-Pacific region may warm up to the One Laptop Per Child's decision to open its design, according to market research analyst IDC.

Multinational PC makers, on the other hand, will continue their focus on mini-notebooks, Reuben Tan, IDC's senior manager for personal systems research in the Asia-Pacific region, told CNET News sister site ZDNet Asia in a phone interview.

Earlier this month, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte announced the organization's intention to open-source its hardware design and invite commercial PC makers to copy it. In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, Negroponte said the OLPC intends to make open as many aspects of its next-generation XO laptop as possible.

Negroponte added the organization is also working to improve features in Netbooks. Current products, he pointed out, lack three design features: low power equal to or below 2 watts; ruggedness and the ability to be repairable easily; and displays that are readable in the sun. Such features could be made available by "nontraditional vendors."

IDC's Tan noted the OLPC has seen successes in Latin America but penetration is "very low" in regions such as the Asia-Pacific. Mini-notebooks, which emerged after OLPC's XO laptops came onto the global scene, have on the other hand "ramped up quite a lot" in the region.

While the OLPC's endeavor would likely attract some interest from local manufacturers and lead to the vendors incorporating "some of the OLPC designs into their own skills," there is also the challenge of keeping costs down.

"If there's going to be traction, I'd say it comes primarily from local, whitebox vendors in various countries that have existing desktop or nettop lines, who are looking to diversify into the portable area," said Tan. But even so, these manufacturers need to focus on the rural areas of emerging markets, he said.

Big multinational PC vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, will continue to focus strongly on the mini-notebook market, said Tan. "There's already that competition in a way...[as] variants of OLPC start to come into the market.

"'What is the target market for this particular product' and 'Will it be competing with mini-notebooks out there'--those will be the questions which these big PC vendors will be asking," he added.

According to Tan, vendors will be most interested in copying its price and optimized operating system--a gap that has not been properly addressed in the mini-notebook market yet.

HP did not respond to ZDNet Asia's queries at the time of writing. A Dell spokesperson told ZDNet Asia the company does not believe in a "one-size-fits-all approach", adding that user demands differ according to markets or need. A Lenovo spokesperson said that it was "premature to comment" as the company does not have details on the OLPC offering.

Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

The One Laptop per Child initiative seems to have found that imitation isn't simply a form of flattery, it's grounds for a new business model.

Speaking at the TED 2009 conference, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the future of the initiative--which set out to put simple, durable, low-cost laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations--is to become, in essence, more commonplace, to "build something that everyone copies," according to Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from TED.

Bold colors were a key part of the original OLPC design.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

That copying has already begun, Negroponte said, pointing to the surging popularity in recent months of Netbooks--laptops built by a range of commercial PC makers with a focus on low cost and simplicity of design. "They didn't copy the right things from us, but they exist," Negroponte said, per Zuckerman. "We had to build the first laptop because no one else would do it."

In the early days of the OLPC, the group's design became famous as the "$100 laptop"--after the target price set for the device--but over time, the price crept up to nearly double that level; the $100 price tag would have to wait for economies of scale that proved elusive. Meanwhile, even before the advent of Netbooks, the price of higher-end laptops kept dropping.

Given the pressure from commercial markets--"It's sort of a tragedy"--Negroponte said that the OLPC would release and open-source its hardware design and invite others to copy it, according to Zuckerman. Within three years, Negroponte expects companies around the world to be cranking out some 5 million to 6 million such machines every month, compared with about a half-million OLPC machines now in use.

Last May, as the OLPC sought broader acceptance--and five months after Bill Gates told CNET News that the "OLPC hasn't done that well"--the group said that it would be working with Microsoft to make a Windows variety of its XO laptop, in addition to the original Linux model.

One month ago, amid harsh economic conditions, the OLPC announced that it would be cutting its workforce by 50 percent and cutting salaries for remaining employees. It also said it would hand off development of its Sugar operating system to the open-source community.

The XO laptop.

(Credit: OLPC)

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Wednesday that it is slashing its workforce by 50 percent, reducing salaries for the remaining staff, and restructuring its operations.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the group that aims to provide low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, announced the cuts in a company blog post:

Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries. We thank team members who are departing for their contributions to this important mission.

Restructuring brings with it pain for some of our friends and colleagues who are being let go. These are people who have dedicated themselves to the advancement of a noble cause, and to say that we are exceeding grateful for the time, the ideas, the energy and the commitment they have given OLPC does not -- cannot -- adequately express our admiration or our gratitude. The fact that there are 500,000 children around the world who have laptops is testament to their extraordinary work and is already a key part of OLPC's legacy.

Negroponte wrote that the company will focus on development of its second-generation device, but will hand-off development of the Sugar operating system to the open source community.

The project recently revived its two-for-one deal on its low-cost laptop. Amazon.com was tapped to handle its Give One, Get One program, launched initially in 2007. Through the program, anyone can pay for two XO laptops; one is shipped to the buyer, and the other is sent to a school kid in a developing nation.

The device comes loaded with both Windows XP and the Linux-based Sugar operating system created for the XO. The inclusion of XP stemmed from concerns that developing nations that wouldn't buy the laptops for its classrooms without the world's dominant OS on it.

However, the Cambridge, Mass.-based group has faced its share of challenges in the three years since it was formed. Its XO laptops initially cost $188 each instead of the anticipated $100, some countries are scaling back their deployment plans. Intel, which was briefly part of the project, quit in January 2008, claiming OLPC was pressuring it not to compete with its own laptops.