Innovation Blog
One Laptop Per Child: Update
By Shlomo Maital
MIT Media Lab founder Prof. Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child vision has been out of the news for some time. Its goal is to “equip each of the two billion children in the developing world with a computer.” The computer, specially designed, uses solar power, has an LED screen visible in sunlight, has wireless, and as Negroponte says, “may be the main source of light in the villages where it is used, in the evenings”.
How is he doing?
According to the Global New York Times, April 19, 2010, the project has failed and it has succeeded, simultaneously.
Failed, because only about 1.6 m. laptops have been distributed so far, according to OLPC Foundation’s Matt Keller. The biggest numbers are in Uruguay (400,000), Peru (280,000), Rwanda (110,000) and Haita and Mongolia, 15,000 each. This is about two orders of magnitude below the project’s sweeping goal.
Succeeded, because the idea has caught on. Microsoft has found ways to help children in the developing world make better uses of existing PC’s. MS software adds multiple cursors on a screen, each controlled by a separate mouse, for example. The product is called Multipoint and was well received. India has indicated it wants to build its own “$100 laptop”.
OLPC has lit a spark that created many innovations. Some nations, like India, preferred to do their own OLPC design and production. This is legitimate. Sometimes, world-changing entrepreneurs like Negroponte need to be satisfied with the fact that the ‘ball’ they toss into the air will be caught by others, who will run with it much faster and better. This, in my view, is success!
Keller says the new OLPC laptops will have a hand crank; one minute of cranking will yield 10 minutes of use.
Say — can I get one of those?
TIMnovate 
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April 26, 2010 at 2:35 am
Brenda
can you get one? maybe.. but it’s not OLPC’s goal to make laptop for consumer purchase, and doing so distracts from their goal (which i think they realised hence the give one get one is no more.)
I see alot of blogs on how “I can’t buy one for my kid, therefore OLPC a failure” (though i realise that’s not what you said at all). If you want the same experience for a kid (or yourself) buy a netbook and install the OLPC’s “sugar” OS on it. The technology that makes OLPC laptops different is the screen that can be viewed in direct sunlight, circuitry that doesn’t shutdown in equator heat, and the alternate power sources. all things that, in general, the average middle class western kid doesn’t have a need for. They’re just “nice to haves”
In summary, the OLPC volunteers spending time on consumer sales doesn’t further their goal.