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So I take it they've made the entire tablet out of the same material they make airplane black boxes out of? Because I've seen children destroy things that were made out of die-cast titanium without even realizing it, let alone feeling sorry about it.

http://olpc.tv/ shows the devices they look pretty solid interestingly I notice the thin screen protector doubles as a solar charger, but they look very solid.

... even though they "only" sold 2 million laptops to children in some of the poorest places in the world, you can find plenty videos online http://olpc.tv/ , see how the kids and teachers are using those daily, it's a huge success. I mean comon, OLPC may have deeply changed the lives of 2 million families in more or less very poor third world countries.

To me, it's pure win. I mean, imagine working for a high-tech company and in so doing having improved the lives of 2 million families. Doesn't that sound GREAT?

The $100 has always been target that can only be reached once more than 6 million units are mass manufactured, that was always the original idea. Intel tactics though, it has been proven in official state letters, successfully blocked OLPC from reaching countries like Nigeria, China, India, etc. But even though they "only" sold 2 million laptops to children in some of the poorest places in the world, you can find plenty videos online http://olpc.tv/ , see how the kids and teachers are using those daily, it's a huge success. I mean comon, OLPC may have deeply changed the lives of 2 million families in more or less very poor third world countries. Sure enough, it'd be better they reached 2 billion kids by now, by they I mean OLPC or anyone else in the industry. It's all about lowering cost and lowering power consumption of laptops and also bringing internet everywhere.

Ever seen a PixelQi screen? Sounds like you haven't, but hey, that can be helped: Pixel Qi vs Kindle vs Toshiba R600 vs regular LCD tablet.

OLPC always said they'd reach the $100 price point by selling many millions of laptops. Initial goal was at least sell 6 million units to reach that price goal. Now, with "only" 1 million units sold, and an unsupported AMD Geode based hardware that uses non-optimized anymore components, you can't expect them to be able to lower the price.

Though OLPC is launching XO-1.5 based on the VIA processor in the next few weeks or months as you can see in the videos on my http://olpc.tv/ Using this new lower power VIA processor, OLPC can speed it up 4x as well and still lower the cost and lower the power consumption.

You complainers about Windows support need to learn that it's BECAUSE OLPC is an open platform that Microsoft is able to port Windows XP for it. You are completely ridiculous not understanding that for OLPC to not support Windows XP, they would have had to build a closed proprietary system. Since specs of XO are opened, and it's X86 based, Microsoft is obviously able to read the specs on the Wiki and build a port of Windows XP for it. It's just plain stupid to keep asking for OLPC to somehow block Microsoft.

Give 1 Get 1 program was not a failure at all. Tens of thousands of laptops were given for free in dozens of countries. To create those dozens of hundred or thousand-laptop OLPC pilot projects. Those projects would not have been financed if it wasn't for the G1G1 program.

Now sure, you can critisize OLPC for not having found more money if you want. I find it that considering they are just a 30-employee non-profit, finding $200 million to fund those 1 million first XO laptops is pretty decent achievement no matter what. Sure, I'd prefer if they had access to billions of dollars to help millions more children get laptops. People in rich countries are greedy, they only care to pay for stuff that they can get for themselves.

The crank was removed from the OLPC quite a while ago, there was some talk about bringing it back in an external form, but I am not sure if that ever reached mass production.

You can find videos about the next generation of OLPC screens and their use in normal laptops at:

http://olpc.tv/

I think you mean olpc.tv.

I don't think that device is coming any time soon, unfortunately.

I'm sure most people working at Intel or Microsoft probably are cool.. Such as the people who probably worked hard for many months making an Intel chip work inside of an Intel version of the XO and having all their work scrapped by a strategical decision at the managment. Or the Microsoft employees who have worked over a year on the XO version of Windows XP. Anyways, I've suggested OLPC to release many more videos on the Internet to let people know what's going on and to let people know the truth while there are all these positive and sometimes negative stories going around on all the big and small media. OLPC is a huge hope for many people following this industry and in my opinion there should be a bit more blogging and video-blogging going on from within, more then http://planet.laptop.org/ I do what I can as an independent fan at http://olpc.tv/

The problem is, this isn't about competing in a free market.

Here's the 60 minutes clip: http://olpc.tv/2007/05/21/60-minutes/

a part of CBS 60 min interview can be found here