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Ambition Fails for One Laptop Per Child

Visionary project lowering expectations as for-profit competitors muscle in

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Nov 25, 2007 2:38 PM CST
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(Newser) – One Laptop Per Child started with a monstrously ambitious goal – build laptops for $100 each, sell them by the millions to the developing world. But since then, cost overruns and attacks from for-profit competitors have ravaged demand, the Wall Street Journal reports. A mere 300,000 are being produced in this month’s inaugural manufacturing run, as developing countries withdraw informal commitments.

Many countries are opting for Intel’s “Classmate” laptop, which runs Windows. OLPC’s machines use Intel competitor's AMD chips and Linux. As countries withdrew million-unit commitments, OLPC had to scale down production, contributing to cost overruns that have made the $100 laptop a $188 laptop. “I’m not good at selling laptops,” admitted OLPC’s founder. “I’m good at selling ideas.”

Yves Behar's One Laptop Per Child project is displayed at the exhibition Design Miami Basel 2007, the global forum for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating design in Basel Switzerland, Wednesday, June 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Keystone, Georgios Kefalas)
Yves Behar's "One Laptop Per Child" project is displayed at the exhibition Design Miami Basel 2007, the global forum for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating design in Basel Switzerland, Wednesday,...   (Associated Press)
Brothers Franco and Lucas Scalabrino, right, show to their mother, Maria Fojo, their new laptop computers given them days earlier by the One Laptop Per Child project in Villa Cardal, Uruguay, Wednesday, May 16, 2007. The ambitious nonprofit project was launched in 2005 by the director of the media lab...
Brothers Franco and Lucas Scalabrino, right, show to their mother, Maria Fojo, their new laptop computers given them days earlier by the One Laptop Per Child project in Villa Cardal, Uruguay, Wednesday,...   (Associated Press)
A laptop XO from the One Laptop Per Child Project is seen in this Sept. 10, 2007 file photo in Dresden, Germany. A promotion in which a customer buying a $188 computer in the U.S. and Canada automatically donates a second one to a child in a developing country...
A laptop XO from the One Laptop Per Child Project is seen in this Sept. 10, 2007 file photo in Dresden, Germany. A promotion in which a customer buying a $188 computer in the U.S. and Canada automatically...   (Associated Press)
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COMMENTS
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Keep selling cheap laptops, supporters urge
PC World

Clouds and silver linings for OLPC
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Here comes the XO laptop
Globe and Mail

 
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