OLPC officially announced on their blog the dissolution of the project

Mar 12, 2014 06:58 GMT  ·  By

Supporters of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will probably be saddened to hear the project has been officially pronounced dead. OLPC was launched back in 2006 in the hopes of bringing children living in less developed parts of the world, laptops in order to promote the role of education.

But now 8 years later, the Boston based OLPC is completely gone, its physical office being closed down, while its staff and consultants have moved on. One of the biggest underlying problems prompting the decision is the XO-1 laptop has no more support or spare parts to back up its existence.

OLPC Boston might have expired, but the idea continues to live on, while the Miami subsidiary is active and still trying to serve major deployments in Uruguay, Peru and Rwanda.

Nevertheless, the project won’t be forgotten easily because it managed to raise awareness that technology today should play a major role in education. Fortunately, there are still projects like ICT4Edu that remain active and determined to help educate individuals living in less developed countries.

OLPC notes “Yet let us be honest with ourselves. The great excitement, energy, and enthusiasm that brought us together is gone. OLPC is dead.”

Strangely enough, back in January at CES 2014, OLPC introduced a bunch of new products, including the XO 4 laptop produced by Marvell, that allowed the pairing with several accessories like a telescope or a microscope with a base that connects directly to the lappy’s USB ports.