The founder of the ambitious US$100 laptop project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed that the machine now costs US$175 and will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.
Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, updated analysts and journalists on Thursday on where the effort stands, saying: "We are perhaps at the most critical stage of OLPC's life."
That is partly because at least seven countries -- Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya -- have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white "XO" computers, but it remains unclear which countries will be first to come up with the cash.
The project needs orders for 3 million machines in order to begin its manufacturing and distribution effort.
The ever-optimistic Negroponte did not sound worried, however, saying that he expects mass production to begin by October.
He also said that many other countries, including Peru and Russia, have inquired about taking part.
The XO machines will be produced by Taiwan's Quanta Computer Inc (
Quanta announced on Thursday the delay of its OLPC project shipments to the fourth quarter instead of the third quarter.
Jason Lin (林群傑), the director of Quanta's strategic investment division, said the delay had been put in place so that new components, including a faster central processing unit, a greater amount of memory and more storage could be bundled into low-cost computers.
Quanta agreed to take a profit of about US$3 per machine, less than what it gets from mainstream PC companies, Negroponte said.
Even so, the machine -- which boasts extremely low electricity consumption, a pulley for hand-generated power, built-in wireless networking and a screen with indoor and outdoor reading modes -- now costs US$175.
The OLPC project takes an additional US$1 to fund its distribution efforts.
Negroponte's team has always stressed that US$100 was a long-term target for the machines and said the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds.
He added that Citigroup Inc's Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis -- Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers and governments will repay the bank.
Even at US$175, the computers upend the standard economics in the PC industry. A huge reason has been XO's use of the free, open-source Linux operating system, tweaked for this project with the help sponsor Red Hat Inc.
The result is that XO's software has been custom designed to make the laptop useful as a collaborative tool and intuitive for children who have never before encountered a computer.
There are no windows or folders, but rather an interface heavily reliant on pictographic icons.
However, Negroponte disclosed that XO's developers have been working with Microsoft so that a version of Windows can run on the machines as well.
That version of Windows could be the US$3 software package that Microsoft announced last week for governments that subsidize student computers.
The version includes Windows XP Starter Edition as well as some of Microsoft's productivity software.
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