The state of cheap laptops

The idea was this: provide for poor schools all the books they didn't have. Math, History, Language.

But it was not an easy task. How do you get hundreds of text books, weighing thousands of pounds, to the far reaches of the world? And what did you do when the information in them became outdated?

The concept was to give, instead of 5 pound books, one 3 pound laptop - low powered (with hand-crank and solar options so that it would even work in areas with no electric grid), rugged (water resistant and sand resistant), with a connection to the internet (and it's thousands, no, thanks to Google, millions of books) - and sell it for $100.

The idea from one Nicholas Negroponte from MIT was ground breaking. And with a cadre of volunteers, he delivered. Using a low-powered AMD Geode processor, a free Linux-based Operating System, and a fantastic screen that worked out in the sunlight, the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO laptop was born.

Right out of the gate it sold fast, to schools in South America and Africa. Unfortunately, as orders for the XO computer started pouring in, businesses suddenly realized that Negroponte was right - there was a large untapped worldwide market for low-cost computers. And that was the projects undoing.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4472654.ece

Today, there are a number of entrants into the low-end laptop market. While Intel's post-OLPC project, the Classmate PC, was gobbling up marketshare around the world thanks to the slightly stronger hardware and the great power of Intel's marketing arm, Asus's Eee PC came out of the gates like a bull - their small, standard component laptop sold for $300 to anyone who wanted it (OLPC and Intel were selling only to schools), and the public ate them up.
http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Search.htm?term=asus%20eee&DefSort=Y&searchFilter=ALL

Acer has also entered the low-cost laptop recently, relying on Intel's Atom low-powered processor.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/atom-nano-review.ars

The result is a good competitor to the EeePC, with a bit more power for just a bit more money:
http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=8708409

OLPC is most likely dead, though the technology may live in in other projects; Mr Negroponte's idea certainly changed the landscape of low-cost computing. Sadly for the school children of the world, the lowest-cost computing system - also the one built with harsher environments in mind - will not be a part.