In a market where the popularity of netbooks is increasing with each day, the One Laptop Per Child program seems to have lost some of the media attention it was initially showered with. Earlier this year, in May, the OLPC project announced a second-generation portable system that would benefit from a dual-touchscreen design. The XO2 was touted as a product that would revive the OLPC concept, while also offering a significant number of features at a much more affordable price tag.

 

Recently, the company's Director of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Matt Keller, has estimated that the upcoming XO2 laptop will become available sometime in the first quarter of 2010, for a price tag of £40 (approximately $71). Keller has also said that the company believes that the XO2 will make reading easier for schoolchildren from emerging countries. “The e-book reader is the most popular function of the laptop,” Keller stated.

 

The OLPC concept is meant to bring most of the necessary educational features in a small and portable computer device. Initially, the systems that we now know as netbooks, were believed to provide the same basic computing features for educational purposes. However, netbooks have deviated from that concept, which is why today one can find such items listed with price tags that come close to those of fully-fledged notebook systems.

 

In related news, Amazon.com is expected to sell OLPC's low-cost XO notebook as part of the Give One, Get One program, initiated by the company last year. The idea behind the program is to provide schoolchildren in poor countries with one of the XO laptops designed by OLPC. Users eager to participate in the program will have to buy two of these laptops, one for themselves and another one that will be donated to a child from an emerging country.

 

“We're a small group of people,” said Keller, trying to explain the company's decision to cooperate with and online retailer. Amazon.com is expected to start selling the XO laptops part of the Give One, Get One program in late November. Depending on sales, the initiative could extend until the end of December.

 

According to Keller, the OLPC XO laptop currently costs around $204 to make, but hopes are high that the company’s upcoming product will be much cheaper than that, with educational users only having to pay around $75 per unit to purchase it.