One Laptop Per Child Project Fights Critics

Nicholas Negroponte the chair of the project is having to fight off many people as companies try to make the project look bad, but that to me is basically trying to kill a guy that’s doing a nice thing because it gets in the way of what you want to do.

Ars Technica has an article talking about what has been going on and my favourite part is when he recounts how Mr. Negroponte is getting companies to change gears to help him reach his goal:

“I said, ‘We’d like to work with you on the display. We need a small display. It doesn’t have perfect color uniformity, it can have pixel or two missing, it doesn’t have to be that bright,” Negroponte recounted. “The manufacturer said, ‘Our strategic plan is to make big displays with perfect color uniformity, zero pixel defects and to make it very bright for the living room.’”

“I said, ‘That’s too bad, because I need 100 million a year.’ They said, ‘Well, maybe we can change our strategic plan.’ That’s the reason you need scale,” Negroponte said.

He claims that the project is on track to produce laptops in 2007 at a cost of US$135, a number that Negroponte wants to see fall to US$50 by 2010. The project has already raised more than US$29 million in funding, and hopes to have millions of the devices in the hands of children by next year.

I really wish the best for the project, and especially if it creates competition driving prices down and features up even more on small portable laptop-like devices.

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