OLPC Notebook Might Be Available to U.S. School Children

The “One Laptop per Child” (OLPC) project said on Thursday it might sell versions of its school children-friendly “XO” notebook in the United States, reversing its previous position of distributing these computers to only the poorest nations, Reuters reports.

“We can’t ignore the United States. … We are looking at it very seriously,” a OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told analysts and reporters.

The OLPC’s XO notebook, which was earlier claimed to be a “$100 laptop”, for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its Linux based operating system, the report says.

Negroponte expects mass production of XO laptop, powered by AMD’s processor, to begin by October.

Some reports say Asustek Computer Inc has scheduled for launch in the second half of the year its similar budget notebooks based on Intel’s Classmate PC platform.

CNet