The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program is a global initiative based on the ideas of Nicholas Negroponte. The program seeks to provide children with low-cost and low-power laptops in order to provide better educational opportunities and encourage learning of new technology. The original laptop designed through the program was called the XO and its software interface was called Sugar. Since the launch of the program in 2005, OLPC has shipped 2.4 million laptops in 42 different countries. Yet, after implementation, many problems were visible with the original laptop. First off, the XO has its own screen which makes it difficult to replace once broken. Also, the XO-1 model contained an inefficient keyboard which broke upon normal usage. Furthermore, the touchpad mouse quickly loses sensitivity and battery life is only a couple of hours.
In response to these problems and many more, OLPC launched their new and improved XO 3.0 tablet in January. This new version is a big initiative to fix some of the major problems with the older versions. For example, this new tablet is capable of touchscreen usage. Furthermore, since the Sugar interface is slow, this new system can run the Android operating system or Linux. Additionally, the tablet’s cover contains a 4-watt solar panel, which is twice the power needed for its function. There are even screws that you can crank to supply power – one minute of cranking gives 10 minutes of battery power. Moreover, the Marvell processor is much more improved and the Sugar interface comes with many new applications.
While this is a great advancement for the program, one thing to consider is whether the new applications and complexity of the devices will be difficult for the children to understand. This will be interesting to see as the new tablets are distributed!
Sources: OLPC, Can One Laptop Per Child Save the World’s Poor?
ICT4D @ Tulane 
February 15th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
I think it’s really interesting that they added the cover that makes the tablet waterproof, and also the few that offer solar panels on the cover. I am curious however, as to how well these solar panels could hold up. Also how well the tablet itself can hold up, even just considering myself using one of these things as a child, I would be pretty rough with it. The touch screen almost seems like it would encourage kids to be more aggressive with the device, because it is much more interactive. A also wonder about maintenance of these… it couldn’t be easier than the laptops and those had a whole slew of problems. It will be interesting to see how these tablets work.
February 17th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
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