One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is still on the go and in addition to its student-oriented XO notebooks, the organization plans to unleash its own tablet on schools in developing countries.
According to OLPC founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte, XO-3 tablet is ready to ship [after years in the making] and working units will be shown next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The device features a 1-GHz Marvell Armada PXA618 CPU, and an 8-inch screen with either a Pixel Qi sunlight-readable panel or standard LCD.
The image above is an artist's concept rendering from the OLPC site, not a photo of the actual XO 3.0, which will be shown for the first time at CES.
"The XO-3 price will be $100 or lower. But this time there are options, so we cannot guarantee the final price," Negroponte said. Like OLPC's XO-1 laptop, the XO-3 will be offered as an educational tool for children in developing countries. Negroponte declined to say if it will also be sold at retail.
Besides the XO 3.0, OLPC and Marvell announced that the latest version of its laptop, the XO 1.75, will start shipping in March. There are 75,000 units already headed to schools in Uruguay and Nicaragua. The XO 1.75 will use the same Marvell Armada PXA618 system-on-a-chip processor as the XO 3.0, which will use half the power of the 1-GHz Via C7-M processor on the current-generation XO 1.5 notebook.
Like the tablet, the XO 1.75 will run Linux with Sugar educational software. The notebook will be priced at $175, but it's unclear whether OLPC will offer the systems to consumers as it did when it released the first-generation XO notebook in 2009.
According to said Ed McNierney, chief technology officer at OLPC:
The tablet provides about eight to 10 hours of battery life, though some audiences may choose a smaller battery capacity to reduce the purchase price.
The internal batteries can be charged by "just about anything that produces DC power," he said. The charging options include solar panels or hand cranks, and a study is under way to see if the battery can be detached and the tablet powered directly through a solar cell.
"Our ability to accept erratic, variable, noisy power inputs is extremely important to us, and something no other tablet has even attempted," McNierney said.
The tablet is also available with a traditional LCD screen. But the optional Pixel Qi display absorbs ambient light to brighten the screen, reducing power consumption and extending battery life.
McNierney further said,
Eight inches is the right size for the display because a 9.7-inch display is too big for children to handle, and 7 inches "seems too small to be usable."
Microsoft's Windows will not run on the device, only Linux-based OSes, Negroponte said. The nonprofit organization has abandoned its pursuit of Windows for tablets, even though Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 will work on ARM processors. Negroponte has said the tablet on display at CES will run Google's Android OS.
OLPC is not dependent on a specific manufacturer for the tablet and will work with "whomsoever wants to roll-out the tablet, for whatsoever purpose, at a very large scale," Negroponte said, adding the objective is to see prices plummet.
Aside from the objective of helping students learn in school, the XO 3.0 will also be used in a study to find out how students can learn from slates. A test group of children in Tanzania, India, and Sierra Leone will have software on their tablets that will record audio and video that researchers can use to study the kids' interactions with the goal of improving self-directed learning, Negroponte told PC World. The study will be run out of the MIT Media Lab and be conducted in partnership with Tufts University, Newcastle University, and OLPC.
Sources: Laptopmag, PC World, Netbooknews
OLPC's $100 XO-3 Tablet to be Unveiled at CES is a post from: Eee PC
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