Quanta Computer, a Taiwan based company, one of the largest notebooks producers, announced that will produce the 100 USD laptop, which was developed by Nicholas Negroponte, chairman at MIT Media Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Negroponte, which is also the president of the non profit group OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), stated that laptops should be available for the governments during next year, for a 100 USD price each.

OLPC stated that the first notebooks are awaited on the market until the last quarter of the next year. They are expecting orders from 5 millions pieces to 15 millions. Also, the prices for the new laptops will be "close to 100 USD" and will drop in time.

The $100 laptop, first announced by Negroponte at the World Economic Forum in January 2005, is an ultra-low-cost, full-featured computer designed to dramatically enhance children's primary and secondary education worldwide. It is a joint project of the Media Lab and the nonprofit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) association, which aims to equip the world's schoolchildren and their teachers with a personal, portable, connected computer.

But the 100 USD laptop receives critics also. Recently, Intel chairman Craig Barrett stated that potential computer users from developing countries would not want a laptop that uses a crank for generating power and will also be available for millions of persons. During a conference in Sri Lanka, Craig Barrett, Intel's chairman stated that "Mr. Negroponte has called it a 100 USD laptop - I think a more realistic title should be 'the 100 USD gadget'. The problem is that gadgets have not been successful."

School students from Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria will begin receiving starting 2006 the first few millions "textbook" computers developed by MIT.