Low-cost display enables $75 laptop

BOSTON, MA—According to a news story posted on the official news site of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC; www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo2) project, the OLPC organization unveiled its plans for the second generation of XO hardware at a much-anticipated May 20 press event at its Boston headquarters. The first generation laptop called Machine XO was developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte. The second-generation laptop XO-2, or XOXO as it’s also called, comes with dual touchscreens; one of the touchscreens can be used as a keyboard to enable the standard typewriter style of computing, while the other is used as the main display.

The XO-2 will make use of displays developed by Pixel Qi which was founded by former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen in early 2008 (see SID review story on page 1 for more details). A press release via gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/392060/olpc-xo-laptop-20-has-dual-touchscreens-looks-amazing-and-future+y) says, “While the first generation XO laptop already requires just one-tenth (2-4 watts versus 20-40 watts) of the electrical power necessary to run a standard laptop, the XO-2 will reduce power consumption even further to 1 watt.”

The OLPC expects the XO-2 to be available in 2010 and to cost around $75, thanks to an international development that enabled a low-cost display, one of the major cost drivers in any notebook personal computer.