OLPC XO

The OLPC XO, previously known as the $100 Laptop,Children's Machine, and 2B1, is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves" (constructionist learning). The laptop is manufactured by Quanta Computer and developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

The subnotebooks are designed for sale to government-education systems which then give each primary school child their own laptop. Pricing was set to start at $188 in 2006, with a stated goal to reach the $100 mark in 2008 and the 50-dollar mark by 2010. When offered for sale in the Give One Get One campaigns of Q4 2006 and Q4 2007, the laptop was sold at $199.

These rugged, low-power computers use flash memory instead of a hard drive, and come with an operating system derived from Fedora Linux as their pre-installed operating system with the Sugar GUI.Mobile ad hoc networking via 802.11s WiFi mesh networking is used to allow many machines to share Internet access as long as at least one of them can see and connect to a router or other access point.

OLPC XO-3

XO-3 was a design for a tablet/e-book reader intended to be developed under the One Laptop per Child initiative, but the project was cancelled in November 2012, replaced by the XO tablet. It was planned to have a tablet computer form factor over the canceled dual-screen design concept of the XO-2. The inner workings were those of the XO 1.75 together with the same ARM processor.

The XO-3 featured an 8-inch 4:3 1024 × 768-resolution display and used a Marvell Technology Group Marvell Armada PXA618SoC. The XO-3 was intended to feature innovative charging options such as a hand crank or a solar panel.

The XO-3 tablet was planned to be released in 2012, for a target price below $100. The XO-3 and accompanying solar cell & handcrank power options were demoed at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, 2012 as shown on BBC News technology programme Click.

Front and back

Front and back

Flexible cover

Flexible cover

Touch screen

Touch screen

One Laptop per Child

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit initiative established with the goal of creating and distributing educational devices for the developing world.

Its primary goal was the production and distribution of the OLPC XO, a low-cost and low-power laptop computer. The project was originally funded by member organizations such as AMD, Chi Mei, eBay, Google, Marvell Technology Group, News Corporation, Nortel, Red Hat, and Quanta.

The OLPC project has received criticism both specific to its mission, and criticism that is typical of many such systems, such as support, ease-of-use, security, content-filtering and privacy issues. Officials in some countries have criticized the project for its appropriateness in terms of price, cultural emphasis and priority as compared to other basic needs of people in third-world settings.

History

At The World Summit on the Information Society held by the United Nations in Tunisia from November 16–18, 2005, several African representatives, most notably Marthe Dansokho (a missionary of United Methodist Church), voiced suspicions towards the motives of the OLPC project and claimed that the project was using an overly "U.S. mindset", pointing out that the presented solutions were not applicable to specifically "African problems". Dansokho said the project demonstrated misplaced priorities, stating that African women would not have enough time to research new crops to grow. She added that clean water and schools were more important. Mohammed Diop specifically criticized the project as an attempt to exploit the governments of poor nations by making them pay for hundreds of millions of machines and the need of further investments into internet infrastructure. Others have similarly criticized laptop deployments in very low income countries, regarding them as cost-ineffective when compared to far simpler measures such as deworming and other expenses on basic child health.