OLPC Envisions Reaching Out to 500 Million

OLPC has been out of the news for a while and they’re now announcing its product roadmap to reach out to the poorest, most rural communities in the world and at the lowest power and cost in the industry. They also listed a few details of new versions of the XO.

The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages. The NGO plans to reach 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet.

The new versions of the XO laptop will be as follows:

XO 1.5 – The XO 1.5 is the same industrial design as the XO 1.0. Based on a VIA processor (replacing AMD), it will provide 2x the speed, 4x DRAM memory and 4x FLASH memory. It will run both the Linux and Windows operating systems. XO 1.5 will be available in January 2010 at about $200 per unit. The actual price floats in accordance with spot markets, particularly for those of DRAM and FLASH.
XO 1.75 – The XO 1.75, to be available in early 2011, will be essentially the same industrial design but rubber-bumpered on the outside and in the inside will be an 8.9", touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 will be based on an ARM processor from Marvell that will enable 2x the speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.5, which will remain in production, giving deployments a choice of processor platform."
XO 3.0 – The XO 3.0 is a totally different approach, to be available in 2012 and at a target price well below $100. It will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it. The XO 3.0 will leapfrog the previously announced (May 2008) XO 2.0, a two-page approach that will not be continued. The inner workings of 3.0 will come from the more modest 1.75. Concept images of the XO 3.0 are available at:

On 20th December the first Sri Lankan project of the OLPC Foundation was officially launched over 400 primary school children being presented OLPC XO laptops.

The project’s pilot phase will benefit over 1,300 children in grades 1-5, chosen from schools in all the nine provinces in Sri Lanka.

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