First orders arrive for cheap laptops

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child programme is off to a strong start, with four countries – Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina – committing to purchase one million units of the inexpensive Linux-operated computers in the coming months. The programme has attracted growing interest from policy makers and educators in the developing world as it would finally introduce a durable and cheaply priced laptop (at around $100) to some of the poorest school-aged children on the planet.

The strong early demand is an encouraging sign for the programme. Some critics had suggested Negroponte's internet-ready laptops – with a 500MHz processor and flash memory core equivalent to the iPod Shuffle – would be too stripped of features to give the world's poor an adequate computing experience. OLPC officials say the first four countries are only the start.

"We are actively moving ahead with Brazil, Argentina and Thailand. Others (countries) are being considered," Khaled Hassounah told tech news site DesktopLinux.com on Monday. The OLPC aims to ship the computers free of charge to poor countries who sign up for the programme. At the outset, it appears that the computers will be priced a bit higher than the $100 goal originally stipulated by Negroponte. But, as storage and processing prices come down, OLPC expects to introduce the first $100 models by 2008. While the price issue has yet to be resolved, OLPC believes it has figured out the power quandary. The first machines will run on 2 watts of power, compared with the 25- to 40-watt laptops on the market today.

Tech firms AMD, Google and Norton have also signed on to lend their expertise to the project of designing the computer.