Although Michalis Bletsas, chief connectivity officer for the One Laptop Per Child project, implied during an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show that the little green boxes might be sold to the general public, it seems that’s not going to happen.
The Bletsas interview was long and detailed, and it’s hard to understand how it might be wrong. But yesterday, the OLPC project went to the trouble of putting out a denial. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte: “Contrary to recent reports, One Laptop per Child is not planning a consumer version of its current XO laptop, designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world.”
Too bad. The idea of paying for two machines, sending one to a child in a developing country, and then connecting the two users to learn from each other is actually a great idea.
Hopefully some of those connections can still be arranged once the XO machines begin distribution.
I’d imagine there are two problems. They’re going to have a lot of trouble making enough laptops anyhow, and the cost of selling them through retail channels, even one like eBay, PLUS shipping one to the developing world, would probably end up being around $450, which would be enough to guarantee not selling a lot.