OLPC's $100 Laptop was going to Change the World -- Then It All Went Wrong

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One Laptop Per Child wasn’t just a laptop, it was a philosophy. After announcing “the $100 Laptop,” OLPC had one job to do: make a laptop that cost $100. As the team developed the XO-1, they slowly realized that this wasn’t going to happen. OLPC pushed the laptop’s cost to a low of $130, but only by cutting so many corners that the laptop barely worked. Its price rose to around $180, and even then, the design had major tradeoffs. While Sugar was an elegant operating system, some potential buyers were dubious of anything that wasn’t Microsoft Windows. They wanted students to learn an interface they’d be using for the rest of their lives, not just with the XO-1. OLPC may have undercut even the XO-1’s strong points by overselling them. And since OLPC had put so much focus on cost, OLPC co-founder Walter Bender began to worry that people saw the project as a hardware startup, not an educational initiative.


OLPC's $100 Laptop was going to Change the World -- Then It All Went Wrong