One Tablet PC per Child XO 3.0 in 2012

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC), organization has unveiled its future road map and it includes a new concept for a tablet PC for well under $100. The XO 3.0 product, planned for 2012 availability, will be an all new design with a single sheet of plastic to imitate a sheet of paper. It will be based on Marvell’s ARM processor and will run Linux and Windows systems. Images here

One Laptop per Child, a non-profit created by Nicholas Negroponte and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab has so far distributed laptops to 1.4 million children in remote, poor and rural communities in 35 countries and 25 languages.

“The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, is a revolution in low-cost, low-power computing,” said Negroponte in a statment. “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 Roadmap for the future XO Laptops

• 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 the speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.5, 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.