This Rs 3,500 Laptop Gave Computer And Internet Access To Many Poor Children

OLPC XO-1 is a laptop released by One Laptop Per Child with the aim of introducing such devices to children around the world, including those in poorer nations. At a cost of Rs 3,548, this is among the most interesting and curious gadgets ever.

The idea of giving easy access to the computer and the internet to every child across the globe originated in 1982 by Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert from Media Lab at MIT. Negroponte then founded One Laptop Per Child and tried to bring the idea to reality. In 2005, he introduced OLPC XO’s first prototypes, a budget, a fully functional laptop with a hand crank on its side so that users could use and charge it in places with unreliable power access. Furthermore, the hand crank was among the first features to he ditched before the laptop went into production.

Powered and charged by a standard wall wart, this device was made to limit the power consumption of a laptop to the lowest with the target end-users as kids in developing nations who couldn’t always access a wall outlet. Additionally, it makes use of flash memory, not a hard drive, to leave out a power-consuming part, and it had a custom-engineered LCD display working well outdoors, which you could switch between black and white and color modes if you want to save more power. And its pivoting screen made the laptop able to turn into a tablet that children can use to read ebooks.

To deal with the problem of limited internet connectivity in poorer countries, this laptop featured two pop-up antennas so it could capture wifi signals better and they doubled as ad-hoc mesh network so you can share one internet connection with other laptops close by.

The OLCP XO also had a balance between function and form, offering features such as buttons beneath the bezel of the screen meaning children can use it as a gaming machine, a keyboard with rubber cover to keep dust and liquids out, as well as a rugged carrying handle.

The idea of bringing laptops to all children was also present in its software. The OLPC XO didn’t run on macOS X or Windows, it instead ran on a lite Linux-based operating system developed by Sugar Labs, a nonprofit. If you are used to Apple and Windows computers, it will take you some time to master the OLPC, but that wouldn’t be a problem for someone who had never touched a computer before. This laptop is designed to look simplified but still encouraged exploring.

However, the laptop wasn’t successful as expected, it was sold at twice the price it’s supposed to, and its software didn’t match what governments want children to learn, which was more towards industry-standard OS. Some even said that the idea was flawed from the beginning as children in developing countries needed basic necessities like medical care and clean water rather than a computer.