Nicholas Negroponte may have had laudable good intentions when he first came out with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, but his first device, the XO, was a failure in many fronts. Now, wiser and bolder, Negroponte is going to give it another go, this time with plans for a $75 tablet and newer, better versions of the OLPC computer.
The original XO didn’t do so well in its aim to provide an over-simplified, $100 computing solution to kids in the third world. As deadlines slipped by and prices rose, netbooks soon came into the scene, offering suitable computing power to anyone with a few hundred dollars for it.
This time, Negroponte and his group has plans to release “vaporwear,” a tablet with 800Mhz processing power and an 8.5-by-11-inch touchscreen display. It’s expected to be sort of a big iPod Touch, bringing affordable entertainment and educational media to developing countries.
“Vaporwear” likely isn’t going to be a fully functional computer, since tablets don’t really do all that well on that front. The OLPC 1.5 (a $200 upgrade to the XO, due out next month) and the OLPC 1.75 (a dual-screen PC due out 2011) will take care of that. It’ll be interesting to see whether Negroponte and the OLPC group does better this time around.
Via: Wired
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