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I woke up Monday to the announcement that starting September 24, the XO laptop (famous as the little laptop that could) will be made available to buyers in so-called first-world countries, in quantities less than 100,000 units. In fact, for less than $400 you can give one and receive another--an excellent solution to an age-old moral dilemma.

We've looked at the OLPC project before--the One Laptop Per Child Foundation wants to give schoolkids around the world access to inexpensive laptops, and has long touted its prototype "$100 laptop," an open-source-based, low-power system built for the rigors of third-world life. We've also seen other companies interested in this space, most notably Intel's Classmate PC, a similar low-cost laptop we got a hands-on preview of recently.

A laptop that costs $100 is still a ways off, and the OLPC XO-1 device was up to around $176 as of earlier this year (although in contrast, the Intel Classmate starts at $225, or $350 for a version with Windows XP and Microsoft Office). This weekend, the price of the OLPC went up again, this time to $188, getting even closer to doubling the original proposed price tag.

Of course, the OLPC systems aren't even going into mass production until October, so we could see more adjustments before then. It's also worth noting that while junky $499 laptops are not uncommon at big-box retail stores, to spend less than $200 on a system specially designed for students in developing countries, complete with software, Wi-Fi antennas, and semi-rugged casings, is still an impressive feat. While the original $100 price tag may have been a little bit of wishful thinking, we expect the OLPC project to continue to be one of the more interesting tech projects out there.

The One Laptop Per Child organization's XO computer, aka the $100 laptop, has just started mass production. And while Crave is happy that thousands of underprivileged African children will reap the benefits of a PC and the Internet, we can't help but feel a little jealous--and even embarrassed.

(Credit: One Laptop Per Child)

Here we are, extolling the virtues of laptops such as the $4,000+ Sony Vaio TZ, when for most users the $100 XO would be just as effective. Sure, it doesn't have a premium badge on the lid, and its 433MHz AMD CPU won't win any speed records, but it'll let you surf the Web, send email, enjoy audio and video, and even, as some Nigerian children have discovered, allow you to browse for porn.

Think about your own PC usage--does it honestly include anything more demanding than Facebook stalking, laughing at idiots on YouTube or hitting the digg button underneath the latest lolcat? Can you justify spending $4,000 when a machine costing $100 pounds will do exactly the same thing? Crave thinks the world can learn a lot from the XO, the ClassMate PC and its ilk. These devices could change the computing world as we know it. And despite its makers saying it's exclusive to the developing world, the XO absolutely should be brought to the West.

Since 1965, the tech world has obsessed about keeping pace with Moore's Law--an empirical observation that computing performance will double every 24 months. Concurrently, consumers have lusted after the latest and greatest computing hardware, encouraged in part by newer, fatter, ever more demanding operating systems and applications.

Moore's law is great for making tech faster, and for making slower, existing tech cheaper, but when consumers realise their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?

We think so. The amount of interest generated by the XO, the ClassMate PC, and more recently the £200 Asus Eee PC is phenomenal. Most people in the Crave office are astounded by their low price and relatively high functionality, and are finding it difficult to justify buying anything else. If you want to play the latest games, well, the latest games consoles, while power-hogs, are relatively cheap and graphically very impressive.

It's almost poetic that the poorest nations in the world have the potential to push the Western tech industry in a new direction. Don't get us wrong--we love fast, outlandish laptops and PCs as much as the next blog, but we'd be idiots not to show you the alternative. And what a fantastic alternative it is. We predict some very interesting, and money-saving times ahead.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: One Laptop Per Child)

The $100 laptop project for children in emerging nations is headed toward the finish line.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) non-profit organization Monday announced its final beta version for the XO laptop.

Beta-4 (B4) will undergo final testing over the next few weeks, then enter mass production in October. The OLPC expects to ship 3 million XO laptops to more than three emerging nations, as part of this initial order, an OLPC spokesman said.

The OLPC has been particularly busy these past few weeks, gearing up for its final beta version, as well as striking a peace accord with Intel. Intel is joining the OLPC board and may serve as a potential supplier to the project.

Currently, AMD is supplying its Geode LX-700 chips to the XO laptop. Other components include 256MB of memory and 1GB of NAND flash, as well as a system designed to offer a fully readable display in bright sunlight, and durability to withstand water, dust clouds and a drop from as high as 5 feet.

Thursday's briefing by Nicholas Negroponte on the One Laptop Per Child initiative seems to have meant different things to different folks.

The Associated Press led with the rising price of the laptop, designed for school-age tots in developing nations ("'$100 laptop' to cost $175"), while the Reuters news agency focused on the potential for use closer to home ("U.S. schools may join inexpensive laptop project"). And The Boston Globe, for which the just-across-the-Charles-River OLPC is in part a local business story, got caught up with the laptop's sense of fun, style and mission ("It's cute, green--and may change world").

The OLPC group says software efforts remain focused on the Linux operating system, even as some of the news reports suggested a looming role for Windows. And the price, backers say, will start to drop once high-volume manufacture and distribution are a reality.

For now, the system once touted as the "$100 laptop" remains very much a work in progress, with a little something for everybody--including schoolchildren in Nigeria who are already trying out the laptops.

Blog community response:

"Got to say, still excited about this project. Last time I held a computer class in the DR, a massive power surge nearly killed me when the computer in question was powered up... These little things should be able to take the abuse, and the unstable power grids of many of these developing countries. Still cannot wait until a consumer model is released, so I can prepair a few classes on them for next time I go down."
--Slashdot user Upaut

"Microsoft clearly doesn't want to see millions of OLPC machines running Linux and has now offered an alternative."
--Hardware 2.0

"The realities of manufacturing and designing mass market products has set in, but the result is still pretty good, don't you think? I saw a prototype a few weeks ago, and they ditched the crank now too. Hopefully they keep the wireless mesh."
--GigaOm

"Negroponte does not try to compete on the market, he pushes his laptops through governments and schools on powerless students."
--TechNewLogy

(Credit: OLPC Wiki)

It seems as if the $100 laptop (give or take a few bucks) has been discussed forever, but the first ones appear to have finally been built and shipped. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project says it has received its first 10 from Quanta, its Taiwanese manufacturing partner.

The project is still in a beta stage, as the first 10 "B1" laptops were hand-assembled before a larger 900-unit run, according to the OLPC Wiki. Pictures were also available on the project's news Web site.

The B1 laptops run Linux and come with AMD's Geode processor, 128MB of memory and 500MB of flash memory for storage. It's not clear how many color options will be available for the devices, but maybe green will be the new black (or gray).

As if the kids in developing nations didn't have to work hard enough to survive, they now have to keep up with all the name changes of the so-called $100 laptop.

MIT's Nicholas Negroponte is now calling the device the "XO," according to Fortune. For a while, it was called the 2B1 (the name that still appears on its official Web site) and before that it was the $100 laptop from the One Laptop Per Child organization.

The name, of course, isn't the only thing that's changed--it will probably cost $130 initially and only get toward $100 in 2008. The laptop is targeted at emerging markets where a few computers can supplement the school curriculum for kids or let individuals create businesses. The results of putting PCs in villages are always interesting: In Mali, radio stations have set up e-mail services that let villagers send messages to each other and communicate quickly. There aren't a lot of phones.

Despite all the publicity, the XO is only one of several computers designed for people in the emerging world. It also seems to be the one with the most potential flaws. It has no hard drive, for one thing, and needs to be subsidized by governments. However, when you start it up, it does play a few bars from a U2 song.