One Laptop Per Child News

In a stunning development that surprised no one, Between the Lines is reporting that the price of an OLPC laptop will be more then $100 a pop. Now Nicholas Negroponte is saying each will now be $130 to $140 w/o shipping, which means the overall cost of just the laptops is now $140 million to purchasing governments. Or a $40 million, 40 percent price hike.

While Negroponte expects to reach $100 per unit by 2008, the $40 million jump isn't likely to win many friends in the short run. Nor is "$140, give or take, laptop" as media-friendly as the magical "$100 laptop."

Still, as many have been saying all along, $100 was a dream not even Negroponte could spin into reality.

Tags: $100 laptop | Between the Lines | OLPC price | One Laptop Per Child |

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While ZDNet UK has expressed its reservations about the OLPC before, today it came out fully against the project saying "the $100 portable is not the right tool for the job".

Echoing the concerns of many, they focus on three areas of concer:

• it uses advanced technology of uncertain robustness in places inimical to support,
• it requires infrastructures both technical and commercial that do not necessarily exist,
• and it does not seem to have been designed in conjunction with the people who'll use it.

Not stopping there, ZDNet UK also questions the technology that Nicholas Negroponte so often touts and notes that the $30 million USD that he's raised and all the press he receives (including this lowly website), are distracting resources from other proven efforts.

Best yet, they even quote the OLPC Wiki in pointing out its weak developer community

there seems to be no clear idea how to organise the many disparate efforts necessary to start a developer community ("we could use some ideas… in regard to rollout and community building" says the OLPC Wiki, forlornly).

Ouch!

Tags: $100 portable | OLPC | OLPC Wiki | ZDNet UK |

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