Came across an exciting article today from Joanna Stern at the “The Pulse of Mobile Tech” blog. One of the things you don’t get from Apple (which is why their marketing is so effective) but do get from other tech companies, is a peek into the development queue.
While the first OLPC (One-Laptop-Per-Child) XO model was, in my opinion, a well designed, rugged, durable PC that had ‘crank’ power and so could be used anywhere in the world. It runs Linux and is an open-source platform that made technology available to any country able to fill the sub-$200 USD price tag. One of the more interesting things OLPC did was identify that many, many people in the US wanted one. So, in the US, they charged $400 per laptop and for each laptop purchased in the US, the buyer ‘sponsored’ the purchase of another OLPC XO laptop for a child in an underdeveloped country. Fantastic!
Well, enter the planning for OLPC XO-2. This one looks to be an incredible advancement and we can only hope that it is built to the specs announced. The new laptop is half the size and contains two side-by-side touch screen displays. Patents will also need to be acquired to handle ‘multi-touch’ technology – technology that can register multiple screen touches simultaneously.
To date, this is technology patented and commonly identified with Apple’s iPhone. To my knowledge, the other operating systems (Linux, Windows XP) have not been developed to handle multi-touch technology so I see this as a significant hurdle for the OLPC initiative.
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