XO-3 concept design is here!

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Update: thanks for all of the feedback on the design!  There has been some discussion about materials, and a few interesting pieces have passed around the office, but no new eye-candy is forthcoming for a while — we’re busy getting the 1.5 out the door.

The XO-3: it’s designed to be thin, sleek, and touch, while continuing to lower power, cost, and material waste.  We’ve been anticipating the new designs for a while, and now they’ve arrived!  As announced in Tuesday’s  press release, after our upcoming releases of our 1.5 and 1.75 models next year, we are looking at the XO-3, a thin touchscreen tablet, for 2012.  Here are the latest images from the Fuse design team:

xo3 1

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XO roadmap updates: XO 1.5, 1.75, and 3

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Today we announced our coming hardware lineup, the pending production of the XO 1.5, and published the first concept photos and timeline for the XO-3 tablet.  Here’s the press release:

ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD DRIVES BREAKTHROUGH ADVANCES IN REVOLUTIONARY XO CHILDREN’S LAPTOP Product Road Map to Deliver Unprecedented High Performance, Low Power Consumption and Design Innovation at Lower and Lower Cost

Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 22, 2009 – One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, announced today its product road map to deliver robust laptop performance and innovative design for use in the most remote, poor and rural communities and at the lowest power and cost in the industry.

“The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, is a revolution in low-cost, low-power computing. The XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “To fulfill our mission of reaching 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet, OLPC will continue to innovate in design and performance. Because we are a non-profit, we hope that industry will copy us.”

The new versions of the XO laptop will be as follows:

• XO 1.5 – The XO 1.5 is the same industrial design as the XO 1.0. Based on a VIA processor (replacing AMD), it will provide 2x the speed, 4x DRAM memory and 4x FLASH memory. It will run both the Linux and Windows operating systems. XO 1.5 will be available in January 2010 at about $200 per unit. The actual price floats in accordance with spot markets, particularly for those of DRAM and FLASH.

• XO 1.75 – The XO 1.75, to be available in early 2011, will be essentially the same industrial design but rubber-bumpered on the outside and in the inside will be an 8.9”, touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 will be based on an ARM processor from Marvell that will enable 2x speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.75, which will remain in production, giving deployments a choice of processor platform.”

• XO 3.0 – The XO 3.0 is a totally different approach, to be available in 2012 and at a target price well below $100. It will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it. The XO 3.0 will leapfrog the previously announced (May 2008) XO 2.0, a two-page approach that will not be continued. The inner workings of 3.0 will come from the more modest 1.75.

Let us know what you think!

New Deployment: Middle East

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UNRWA Amari Girls School, an elementary school in the West Bank

OLPC has launched a new deployment in the Middle East in conjunction with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Since the start of its operations in 1950, UNRWA has been a vital provider of basic necessities, health care, and education for Palestine Refugees. Largely funded by the two Give One Get One campaigns and other contributions, OLPC hopes to enrich the education of these children whose lives have been uprooted by warfare. The first wave of 2,700 donated laptops will reach the Gaza and the West Bank in January 2010. Check out the new Middle East page on our website for more information.

FoodForce2 update: facelift and new website

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Foodforce2 team has released a stable release of FoodForce2 activity, and has refreshed its website at www.foodforce2.com.  (Aside from the delicious but lapsed Rollca Rollcats, this makes it the first Sugar activity to develop its own site!)  FF2 saw a great response this summer, with close to 150 thousand downloads over 6 months after the Beta version was released in May. This game has been developed to make the children learn to apply their education to build a self-sustainable village and learn to trade and strategize in a fun way.

You are given responsibility of the village during an important wedding.

You are given responsibility of the village during an important wedding.

The team welcomes your feedback and would like to encourage you to give the game a try. The new release has lots of improvements, with an improved story and interface, better save/resume, customizable building placement, and the fantastic panoramic photographs from its earlier versions.  Details after the jump.

Sri Lankan president launches a national XO program

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from the long time coming department:

Support for OLPC in Sri Lanka has been strong for some time, since Matt and Roger Sipitakiat visited them in early 2008.  After building a coalition of supporters, they have spent the past few months preparing for the launch of the country’s first 1300 machines.  This is a complex project despite the limited number of students involved, with underserved schools from each of Sri Lanka’s nine provinces taking part and direct oversight of the government – an indication of how this could work as part of a national deployment.

Today Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Education Minister Premajayantha presented the first 400 laptops at a public ceremony announcing this pilot program, in cooperation with the One Laptop Per Child Lanka Foundation, the World Bank, and a coalition of corporate donors (the Chart Foundation, Hatton National Bank, and mobile provider Tigo).  I can’t wait to see the first updates from the teachers and students after they have had a chance to start working together.

Sri Lankan President handing out laptops on December 10.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa handing out laptops on December 10 at Temple Trees.

PixelQi update: 3Qi display enters production

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When I joined OLPC in 2006, the first thing that blew my mind was the open collaborative process  used across the project.  The second was Mary Lou Jepsen‘s incredible  sunlight-readable screen.

When the first prototype came to our machine lab, I used to stop in every day before heading home, to spend a few minutes looking at it or using it.  The displays have a delicious matte quality (the original prototypes had a similar glossy one) that makes anything displayed on them look like a work of art — not unlike the effect of a good matte finish on a photo print, or a tuxedo on the boy next door.  And it’s low-power and inexpensive, the sort of technology shift that should become universal.

We have always been open about the tech that goes into our work, in the hopes that other designers and creators will learn from our experiences.  And this display, one of the miracles of the XO, has long been something we’ve hoped to see appear in other laptops and devices.

So it has been delightful to watch the growth of PixelQi, Mary Lou’s new company focusing on producing and distributing those displays.  Their latest screen is 10.1″ and slightly lower-power and higher contrast than the screen in the XO-1.  Here’s a side-by-side comparison of different displays in an office… one of them with its backlight off.

A Pixel Qi screen with its backlight off, next to standard computers with backlights on. Bright office lighting.

A Pixel Qi screen with its backlight off, next to standard computers with backlights on, in bright office lighting conditions.

Today they announced they have started mass production, and will be on display with some of their first clients in at CES in January.   Technophiles may be lusting after them for indoor use, but we’re looking forward to the day that all netbooks are usable in outdoor classrooms.   To the PixelQi team: congratulations!

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http://pixelqi.com/