$75 Laptop in the Pipeline?

We have spoken before about the laudable One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to supply laptops costing $100 to children in poor countries and which indirectly spawned the recent influx of cheap mini laptops, like the Asus Eee PC, Elonex one et al. Well. OLPC has now unveiled a mock-up of a future model, which could sell for as little as $75.

There’s no need to get too excited, the $100 target for the OLPC XO1 still hasn’t been achieved (it’s closer to $200…), but like its predecessor the XO-2, has some interesting features. These include dual touch and haptic (pressure) sensitive screens, both daylight (and indoor) viewable. One screen can be used as a configurable keyboard or for pen input. Alternatively the machine can be turned on its side, help open like a book and used to display text and documents. Power consumption – important when the user may not have ready access to a reliable mains supply, could be less than 1 watt, which compares with the 35 to 50 watts consumed by many current laptops.