The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation will be selling 25,000 of it's laptop computers to the general public in November 2007. The deal is you buy one, get one free, but the free laptop goes to a child in a developing country, all for paltry sum of US$399. I wrote about this
project awhile ago.
The
BBC is today running a story on the implications of this on the wider notebook and desktop PC markets, speculating this could be the start of a movement away from expensive notebook computers towards laptops similar to the OLPC version.
For me, the most significant features of the OLPC laptop are the reasons being used by individuals wanting to purchase it. Many are saying the lack of a hard drive is no impediment to an online experience, after all corporations such as Google provide large email accounts and document processing, with storage of files, music and video can be streamed, photographs can be uploaded to free or paid storage sites, and sent to print shops easily enough.
So perhaps the BBC are correct, maybe the OLPC laptop will revolutionise the IT industry. In a connected world the OLPC laptop is the perfect budget computer. Alas, I've found that Internet connectivity isn't ubiquitous, so I won't be giving up my MacBook just yet.
