For those that haven't heard of this scheme it was developed a couple of years ago with the intention of providing children in developing countries with a laptop each for the ultra low cost of $100. This was to be paid directly from governments which would then mean no money would be wasted on marketing etc.
It was pioneered by a MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte at Davos (same place where the Bill Gates video is from). The idea was to get all the big computing countries onboard top donate then help develop the XO laptop, these included giants such as Google, Intel, AMD, Ebay, and Red Hat. Its goal is: "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves"
The laptop is by no means a top-of-the-range system and relies on cheap parts and free open-source software. For instance it uses Linux as opposed to Windows as an operating system along with open source office programs. However in recent months Intel have rocked the boat considerably by leaving the group to promote their own laptop in direct competition. http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=939 Intel seem to think there is some profit to be made from these low costs laptops and have even gone as far as to employ some dirty marketing tricks to convince companies of their "superior" laptop (see the digital divide article for more details)
Due to the competition and the loss of the Intel chips it has pushed the price up to almost double. They OLPC scheme has also introduced a "buy one, get one free" or "Give one, Get one" type scheme in which people in developed countries such as our own may now buy one for ourselves for around $400 and one is then sent to a child in a developing world.
Check out the website http://laptop.org/ Its a really interesting scheme and product, however a few questions should probably be asked in terms of how effective it will truly be?
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