Low-cost laptops for 3 mn children by 2009

Encouraged by its pilot project Khairat near Mumbai, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in India has resolved to distribute three million XO laptops among the children entering schools by the end of 2009. It has just set up its India office in New Delhi and appointed Satish Jha as the president and CEO (OLPC India).

OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organisations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Microsoft, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat. Each company has donated $2 million. Microsoft is contributing through its features that are fitted into the XOs. The OLPC is chaired by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte.

Each of these laptops costs approximately Rs 12, 000 per set, and consumes just 1 watt of power. It has a screen that is visible in sunlight, resistant to water spilled on keyboards, has a dual boot system with Windows XP preloaded and MS Office access and several programmes that are open source-based that have been localised for various regions of India.

OLPC officials hope that if production increases, the price may even come down to Rs 1,000 per set. Given that it comes with Microsoft Windows and office pre-loaded alone can more than justify the laptop as almost free. Its gains are in the variety of open source applications that come with it, along with wikipedia that is also pre-loaded.