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Few technologies in recent years have inspired as much interest or discussion as the One Laptop Per Child’s effort to provide what has been called the $100 laptop to the developing world.
When it was first discussed, many said it would be impossible to build a laptop for anywhere near that price. And then, as the laptop came closer to reality, many took to critizing its capabilities and its mission to provide computing resources as an educational tool for children around the world.
But now the $100 (actually $175) laptop, dubbed the XO, is going into mass production and will soon be in the hands of millions of children in the developing world. However, while much of the focus has been on the price of the laptop, many of the most impressive aspects of the XO are in its technology. The XO has made some impressive breakthroughs in power management, display technology and collaboration.
I recently had the opportunity to spend time at the offices of the OLPC and take a first hand look at the final beta of the XO.
While there, OLPC President Walter Bender gave me a demo of the XO’s Sugar software interface and I also got on the phone with OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen to talk about the many technology innovations in the XO hardware.
eWEEK’s Emerging Technology Looks at the OLPC’s XO laptop
Deep Dive on the XO Laptop eWEEK’s Emerging Technology takes a detailed look at the final beta release of the OLPC’s XO laptop
See the XO’s Sugar Interface in Action. Get a first hand look at Sugar features such as the Mesh and see some of the applications bundled with the XO’s Linux-based operating system
The Hardware of the XO laptop – While at the OLPC offices we had the opportunity to get hands-on with the XO laptop
And more to come. Check back later this week as I’ll be posting a podcast of my interviews with OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen and OLPC President Walter Bender.