Nicholas Negroponte Talks Up Second Gen OLPC Laptop

The One Laptop Per Child project has taken a beating in the last few months with problems around scale of production, price and staff cuts.

The first laptop from the project, the XO-1, has mostly been sold through the 'Give One, Get One' program. Now a second generation version is on its way.

The XO-2 will be a $75 dual-screen device that can be held up vertically to resemble a book and turned around to use as a notebook.

The interesting thing here is that the hardware development will be open source in a bid to spur greater adoption, says Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab and champion of the OLPC project in an interview with The Guardian.

One important thing about the XO-2 is that we're going to do it as an open source hardware programme. The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple.
The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google - we'll want people to copy it. We'll make the constituent parts available. We'll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the
XO-1.

Dual display aside, it will be touch-sensitive and have a haptic keyboard available, says Negroponte. Here's a leaked photo of what this dual display device could look like.

With its $75 price point there's also the hope that the XO-2 could potentially be used as a e-book reader in more developed markets. Maybe the OLPC project will be second-time lucky.

Photo: XO-1 (Jeff Kubina/Flickr)