A laptop computer which is aimed at assisting school children in developing countries and costs only R910 ($130) was unveiled in Beijing on Thursday.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative revealed its final industrial prototype of an operating laptop computer with a toy-like design known as the XO.It is intended to bring the most isolated villages into the information age, with the ultimate goal of having one laptop available to every child on the planet.
The initiative hoped to make the laptops even more accessible to those living in poorer communities by bringing down the price to $100, or about R700, by next year.
The XO's design is intended to operate in the most power-sparse environments where electricity for recharging is hard to come by. It is equipped with a battery recharger that operates like a wind-up toy. Users attach a yo-yo like device to a fixed object such as a door and then yank a pull-string to recharge the battery.
While a typical modern laptop requires 40 watts of power, the XO laptop needs a miniscule three watts in order to let the user browse the Internet, and less than a single watt to display an electronic book.
The XO's screen can operate in either colour or black and white. The reason for this is that in black-and-white mode it can be viewed clearly even in bright sunlight. This makes it ideal for rural villages where many activities occur outside.
The keyboard has also been designed for children's small hands with the keys placed a little too close together for an adult to type comfortably.
The XO runs on a Linux-based operating system, which assisted in the product development by keeping costs down as Linux is an open-source free operating system. This also allows users to develop programmes aimed at children such as games and other software with ease.
Whether the units will be given away for free has not been clarified. OLPC expects to start delivering the machines in mid-2007, with the goal of delivering 5-million units within the first year.
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