OLPC’s XO Shipment Dates Hit by Production Delays

by Anton Shilov
10/23/2007 | 10:57 PM

The non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) on Tuesday said that it will hardly be able to deliver its laptops to the U.S. and <%BANNER[article]%>Canada due to production delays. As a result, participants of the Give 1 Get 1 program from the well-developed countries will hardly see their pre-ordered gadgets this year.

The XO laptops from OLPC were projected to enter production in October, in time to manufacture tens of thousands of laptops for Peru and Uruguay, the first two countries to order the systems from the non-profit group, as well as for those in Canada and the U.S., who bought two laptops under the Give 1 Get 1 program and were eligible to get one with one going away to a child from the developing country.

“[The production] is now slated to begin by November 12. […]We had some last-minute bugs. We’ve resolved them,” said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for the OLPC organization, Reuters news-agency reports.

Due to production setbacks, it would now be tough to get those laptops to South America by December, in time for kids to use them over their summer vacation, and also meet orders for the foundation’s Give 1 Get 1 scheme for people in the United States and Canada, the technology chief of OLPC is reported to have said.

Starting November 12, the non-profit org planned to start offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, end-users in the U.S. or Canada will be purchasing two XO laptops – one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to them. In addition, end-users will be able to donate $200 or more to the organization in order to get a laptop or two to children in developing countries. Although the reasons why some would participate in the “G1G1” program are far from getting a laptop, production delay once again raises questions regarding feasibility of the whole OLPC project.

Current OLPC XO laptop features AMD Geode LX-700 processor with 433MHz clock-speed and built-in graphics controller, 256MB of PC-2100 (DDR 266MHz) memory, 1GB NAND flash that substitutes hard disk drive, 7.5” screen with 1200x900 resolution, wireless and wired network adapters as well as integrated webcam, microphone, speakers and so on.