Learn, Create, Share: One Laptop Per Child
This isn't a laptop you'll find in the electronics store. To be useful and reliable, the laptop must meet requirements that differ from commercial machines. It must be inexpensive enough to produce so that countries unable to afford more expensive, mainstream machines can afford to buy them in mass quantities. But it also must be rugged and durable to survive the wear-and-tear of daily use and exposure to the elements. Dust, rain, extreme high and low temperatures. And then there are the kids it was made for.
To encourage curiosity and open learning, the system itself must be open so that they can see technology work from the inside out, can learn by sharing and programming. And it must be sturdy enough to survive that learning curve. Which is why the laptop is going to have one big, powerful, "undo" button.
Finally, and equally as important, this laptop must be easy to use. In all aspects of development, designers remember that this laptop is for children.
The laptop will be Linux-based, running on a slimmed down version of Fedora. An entirely new interface and desktop suite is being designed and tailored to kids. And every software application that ships on the laptop will be open source.
To make them durable, there are no moving parts inside the laptop and all connections are reinforced and molded into the plastic of the body. The laptop will have a thicker rubber coating than commercial machines, the keyboard is sealed to prevent contamination, and when closed the laptop itself will be hermetically sealed. Rugged.
"It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140. That is a start price, but what we have to do is with every release make it cheaper and cheaper—we are promising that the price will go down."
- Nicholas Negroponte, Red Hat Summit 2006
Since the laptops' primary destination is underdeveloped nations, solving the issue of power availability required creativity. Alternative energy sources of all kinds have been considered, including hand cranks and foot pedals on the AC adapter, pull-cords (sort of a cross between a lawn mower and a wind-up toy), and pulley systems to generate electricity.
And the machines may not be $100 when first distributed, either. But the price will continue to decrease as more are produced. Negroponte now estimates that the 2007 machines will be $135 each, and that the cost per machine won't drop to $100 until at least 2008. However, by 2010 the price could drop as low as $50.
