A flat touchscreen tablet called the XO-3

[SoCalDem]

Designer Yves Behar shares images and details from One Laptop Per Child's flashy PC plans.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer-negroponte-technology-cio-network-olpc.html

Take a look at the designs for what could someday be the world's cheapest PC, and you may start to wish you were a third-grade child in Burundi.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's non-profit effort aimed at putting cheap educational laptops into the hands of developing world schoolchildren, is working on an upgrade to its so-called XO computer, once known as the "hundred-dollar laptop."


That revamped machine, known as the XO-3 and targeted for release in 2012, is still more of a pipe dream than a product. But early designs for the PC reveal a minimalist slate of touch-powered electronics that drops practically every feature of a traditional computer except its 8.5-by-11-inch screen, a scheme that would shed all of the first XO's child-like clunkiness without losing its simple accessibility.

In Pictures: The $75 Future Computer

"I wanted to bring the One Laptop Per Child identity to life in this new form," says Yves Behar, founder of FuseProject, which designed the both the original and the XO-3. "That meant taking the visual complexity away, bringing tactility and friendliness, touch and color."

Behar says he hopes to shrink the frame around the XO-3's display down to practically nothing, opting for a virtual keyboard instead of a physical one, and no buttons. The result, in his mock-ups, is a screen surrounded by only a thin green rubber gasket. "Nicholas asked for something extremely simple and practically frameless," he says. "The media or content on the computer will be the prime visual element."

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[SpiralHawk]

1. Cool.

Don't let the, um, Party of NO get anywhere near this.

[dysfunctional press]

2. as someone with thick fingers, i find small/virtual keyboards extremely frustrating...

which is just one of the myriad reasons that i don't 'do' text messages via cellphone.

[Way2go]

3. much easier to simply use the PHONE & let others type. nt

[dysfunctional press]

5. exactly.

i just don't get the appeal, or even the need for text messages. :shrug:

[n2doc]

4. looks fragile n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

7. They are trying to make it less fragile..

It aims to make its tablet PC highly durable, all plastic, waterproof, half the thickness of an iPhone and use less than a watt of power, despite an 8-gigaherz processor. The price: an unprecedented $75.


So OLPC hopes to incorporate plastic back-plane components, possibly from Mountain View, Calif.-based Plastic Logic, that would be far more durable.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Truly intriguing. I hope it happens soon.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. We science fiction writers are quickly seeing some of the world

come to be.

These are slates, pure and simple.

And they are COOL.

Hell, he could even have a market with professional writers that will go... HMMM that to take on trips instead of even a Netbook.

By the way netbooks are not quite 100 but they are close in some respects.

Oh and a bet here, the OS will NOT be windows...

[SoCalDem]

9. Last year I did the OLPC buy one get one.. Still have mine in a box

It's just too darned cute to use..maybe someday a grandkid will learn on it..

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. If they do that wiht this little thing I will do that in a new york minute

and trust me, I will use it. Hell, writing from a netbook right now. Reality is the slate that Mac is bringing out to the market, rumored that is, is cute but a little too rich for my taste (price wise)

But something like this... hell will do two, and make sure Javier has one for school.

[SoCalDem]

12. The Buy one get one is one for you and one donated to a poor kid in a 3rd world country

When I did it, it cost me $398.00 for the two of them, and I got a $200 deduction.. You can even specify which country you want yours to go to:)

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Javier is Letty's son

he is oh 18 months right now and cute as a button, but very technically they are poor. So I will have to make sure, at one point or another, that he has the technology he will need for school. There are many reasons for that.

He got a book for Christmas, his first book.

[glitch]

10. I want one! nt