One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, or the XO, was a flop however you look at it. Instead of just making a cheap, basic machine that could tough it out in its target third-world market, Nicholas Negroponte’s supposedly $100 laptop instead chose to both patronize and confuse with an over-simplified interface. At the same time, as the price rose and dates slipped by, the Rise of the Atom put cheap netbooks within reach of anyone with a few hundred bucks.
Now, Nick’s back, with the XO-3. The new hardware (read: vaporware) will come in the familiar green and white livery, only this time it's a tablet (surprise, right?). The XO-3 will be showing its 800Mhz, 8.5-by-11-inch face in 2010, when hopefully the technology will exist to build what is essentially a giant iPod Touch for just $75.
But making an impossibly cheap entertainment device for developing countries (for what else is a tablet but a handheld media-center? Certainly not a functional computer or Microsoft’s earlier tablet PC efforts would have been successful) is not the only mission of the OLPC group. Negroponte told Engadget that there will be an OLPC 1.5 appearing in January, a $200 update to the current hardware, and an OLPC 1.75 in 2011, which will make good on the dual-screen promise first teased in May this year.
We’d love to see all of these devices, but CG mockups and philanthropic promises aren’t the same as real, shipping hardware. Still, the picture do look good.
The $75 Future Computer [Forbes]
OLPC shows off absurdly thin XO-3 concept tablet for 2012 [Engadget]
