1 Million OLPCs Already On Order

alphadogg writes "Quanta Computer has confirmed orders for 1 million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The article goes into some background on the project, and lays out the enthusiastic adoption that the project is seeing overseas. The company estimates they'll ship somewhere between 5 and 10 Million units this year, with 7 countries already signed up to receive units. The machines currently cost $130, but with that kind of volume the original goal of $100 a machine may be viable. Even with the low cost, Quanta expects to make a small profit on each machine, making charity work that much easier."

Comments

I can use a small stack at home

[viking2000]

I'll buy a stack of these for things like:
-Universal remote
-home automation
-kids games
-nursing room monitor
-Entrance door camera/display/speaker/mic
-Asterisk PBX
-Picture frame for grandma
-etc

Re:I Want One

[Pollardito]

Early on in this project I thought the public would be able to buy one at an inflated price (something like $300), the inflated portion of which would be used to send more laptops to more kids. that's because someone ran an unofficial petition of "i'd buy one for 3x the price, with the extra profit going toward a donation of 2 for third-world countries" that was promoted on Slashdot many, many times. only some of those times was it made clear that the petition was not at all affiliated with the real project, so i think a lot of people assumed that if they got enough signatures it might happen or that it was already a planned program.