By Bruce Gain on Sunday, 19 August 2007
 The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project’s mission to empower children in poverty-stricken regions around the world by giving them a $100 laptop could not be more worthy. For the price of a university textbook, a child who might otherwise lack the pens, paper and books to go to school will have a learning tool with potential access to a vast amount of content.
But all is not well with this noble pursuit. The OLPC project’s founder and chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, who is on leave as director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Laboratory (where he was one of the founders and former head of its Media Laboratory), recently accused Intel of thwarting the campaign on national TV in the US.
 Nicholas Negroponte
Intel’s CEO Craig Barrett was quick to deny the claims: “Someone at Intel was just comparing the Classmate PC with another product being offered in the marketplace,” he said during an interview with CBS News in the US. “That’s the way our business works.” Barrett also contended that Intel not only supports OLPC, but said the firm might even collaborate on the project. However, OLPC representatives maintain Intel declined to take part when approached during the early stages of the project.
 The Intel Classmate PC The naysayers
Competition from Intel isn’t the only worry for the OLPC project, though. Geekcorps (a non-profit organisation working to expand internet use in developing countries) director Wayan Vota is one of a growing chorus of naysayers, which now include African politicians and aid workers. Many do not equate the OLPC as a modern-day Robin Hood venture by right-hearted MIT-grad philanthropists. Geekcorps reckons that under-privileged kids need hands-on help, not just laptops and it sends out aid workers who not only distribute laptops, but remain on-site to help with the enormous hurdles PC users in developing countries face.
At a crossroads
Controversy aside, the OLPC project is still at a critical juncture. After its inception in 2005, the OLPC has been racing to realise its goal to deliver three million of its XO laptops to children around the world by the end of this year. The rollout was originally scheduled for early this year, but OLPC delayed the launch to late summer or early autumn as a result of largely unspecified design and distribution challenges.
Whether or not OLPC’s organisers realise their dream hinges on relationships with their partners, such as Taiwan-based contract electronics manufacturer Quanta Computer. OLPC representatives must also negotiate the terms of the XO’s distribution on a case-by-case basis with government officials of participating countries — governments must essentially fund the project themselves. OLPC spokespersons and executives won’t, however, give details of the terms of these agreements.
Uruguay was the first country in which the XOs were distributed to an entire school and only a few of the laptops have reached students as part of beta projects in Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand.
The $100 box
Whether or not the OLPC project will reach its goal of lowering the XO’s price to its $100 per-unit target by 2010 depends largely on its supplier relationship. Until then, they’ll cost $175 each.
“Price is only loosely correlated with volume,” says Walter Bender, OLPC president of software and content. “It's more about the commodity pricing of things like memory, flash and so on, as well as advances in our design.”
The low price, whether it’s $175 this year or $100 in the near future, is not initially intended to benefit anyone looking for a scaled-down laptop on the cheap, and finding one for sale on eBay means that someone has violated the terms of a contract. OLPC might one day make the laptops available directly to consumers, but has no plans to do so in the immediate future.
Besides its low price point, reduced power consumption is also a key feature, since many children OLPC targets do not have electricity in their homes. The laptops will run up to 10 hours on a charge, consuming only 2W of power, compared to the 20W used by mainstream laptops. And for those with no power at all, OLPC is designing human-power alternatives. Potential solutions include a hand-cranked system that would add a 10-minute charge to the battery after one minute of turning.
The XO also has features adapted to the rough demands and needs of children in general. The 7.5” screen can be turned around and laid flat for writing on, the keyboard and case are packed with rubber to withstand shocks, and the laptop is made using materials that can withstand cold and heat over a period of five years.
The Linux-powered XO also has a mesh networking wireless module that allows one OLPC that sits within range of an access point to provide piggyback internet access and file-sharing to others that lie within 500m of each other.
The big picture
While Mobile Computer has yet to test an XO, the first prototype laptops are up and running, so the project has achieved some success. But despite the publicity, the project is only a small, albeit important, step in making PCs available to underprivileged children. Even if OLPC succeeds in distribution three million of its XOs in schools in under developed nations around the world this year, the volumes will still be relatively small. Three million children represent only a fraction of an estimated 1.2 billion primary and secondary school-aged children worldwide.
Negroponte’s much-publicised barbs against Intel for wanting to make money with its Classmate project will probably turn out to be a minor footnote in the history of the project. Indeed, OLPC and Intel’s approaches differ, but so will the philosophies of other players with projects of their own — Microsoft, for example, with its Imagine Cup and Partners in Learning programmes.
According to Davies, it could be two decades before children around he world see the four-child to one computer ratio found in wealthy nations. By then, expect to see huge disparities in teaching, distribution and political philosophies associated with a similar purpose.
“It is not just about the platform: it is about the teaching, whether or not the kids are learning and what content you have.” Intel’s Davies said. “There will be a lot of different flavours.”
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