Will the $100 laptop help save the developing world?
By now, you’ve probably heard of the “$100 laptop,” a product five years in the making. The XO laptop, as it’s officially called, is produced by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Nicholas Negroponte, who also founded the MIT Media Lab. The OLPC Foundation aims to provide these laptops to millions of children throughout the developing world in order to improve their education and their quality of life. Let’s take a look at the XO laptop to find why it’s generating so much buzz. The XO laptop was designed to be lightweight, cheap and adaptable to the conditions of the developing world. While a $100 laptop is the goal, as of September 2007, the laptop costs about $188. Originally the OLPC Foundation said that governments must buy the laptop in batches of 25,000 to distribute to their citizens, but a new program will soon allow private citizens to purchase an XO. As of Nov. 12, 200
