The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has announced they are launching OLPC America and will be offering Nicholas Negroponte’s “$100 laptop” to needy students here in the United States. Negroponte stated the reasoning for launching the laptops, which were originally intended for children in developing nations, in the U.S. is party due to building “critical mass” and getting some more momentum and production volume going. He also said the goal was to proved education for U.S. children, communication with kids in other countries. “To have the United Sates be the only country that’s not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous,” Negroponte said.

The OLPC has been in the news quite a bit over this past year. The original goal was to provide a $100 laptop for children in poor, developing countries, helping their education, communication and understanding of current technologies. The program has met a number of “bumps” along the way, mostly with the production numbers. In order to obtain a $100 price tag Negroponte needed to have large orders of the XO laptop, targeting the governments of many developing countries. To date the orders from these countries have been limited and have kept the price well above the $100 mark. The OLPC has also be working with partners such as Microsoft with rumors of a dual-boot system that would be able to run Windows which has not yet come to fruition. They also had partnered with Intel on development of the XO, in which Intel has recently withdrawn.

On Friday Intel announced that it will join Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative to provide inexpensive computers to the children of developing nations. This announcement came as somewhat of a surprise to many since Intel also has a similar, what some might say competing, initiative with its Classmate PC.

The Classmate PC from Intel is priced at $225 and requires external power, while the OLPC machine, originally targeted for $100, is now costing $175 and is powered by cranking a handle …

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project head Nicholas Negroponte has announced the the OLPC laptops have had a price increase and may not start actual production until October.

The OLPC machines were previously touted for the very inexpensive price of $100 each, but now Negroponte is saying that the price of the machines may be as much as $175 each due to increased prices in materials, including nickel in particular.

The actual production of the OLPC laptops may be delayed, as well. In order for production to begin orders of …

Earlier this week Slippery Brick reported on the XO laptop and the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization, stating reports that the company planned on making the XO laptop commercially available for as little as $100 USD. According to Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the OLPC, making the XO laptops available to the public is not in the plans for this year, but may be in the future.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you couldn’t buy one …

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative unveiled it’s XO laptop, the initiatives first industrial prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The laptop is designed to be used with very little power, and can run on less than three watts to browse the internet and only one watt to display an electronic book, compared to the 40 watts necessary to power a typical laptop. The XO Laptop from OLPC has a battery charger built into the machine that runs by pulling a cord to recharge the …