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OLPC Gets $5.6M Grant To Develop Tablet With Marvell

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-hip-device-per-child dept.

tugfoigel writes "According to Xconomy, 'The One Laptop per Child Foundation and Santa Clara, CA-based semiconductor maker Marvell have cemented a partnership announced last spring, with Marvell agreeing to provide OLPC with $5.6 million to fund development of its next generation tablet computer. Nicholas Negroponte says the deal, signed in the past week or so but not previously announced, runs through 2011. "Their money is a grant to the OLPC Foundation to develop a tablet or tablets based on their chip," he says. The OLPC tablet ... is known as the XO 3 because it represents the third-generation of the XO laptop currently sold by OLPC (the foundation scrapped plans for its e-book-like XO 2 computer and is moving straight to the tablet). ... The deal, he says, means the tablet's development is "fully funded."'"

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OLPC by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When you are satisfying consumer demand, is it caving?

  2. OLPC software isn't attractive to parents by feenberg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The good news is that the Marvel chip won't support Windows.

    The bad news is that the child with an OLPC while she may learn to do art on her computer, won't learn to do anything helpful in any labor market on earth. With a tablet, she won't even learn to touch type. I know that the project wants to prepare her for more self-actualizing career, such as poet, designer, president or CIO, very few will have that opportunity if they can't get an entry level job in the urban sector.

  3. Re:This is wonderful news! by wonkavader · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Heck yeah. The OLPC guys came out with a neato box for $200, and you had to buy one buy buying two (on for you, one for a kid). They missed their mark by something like a factor of two, but definitely came up with a bunch of good ideas for an educational device, and a cheap one, at that.

    Sure they'll miss the mark on this one, too. But it'll still push the industry downward. It won't take much innovation to get prices even lower, but it will take some. OLPC will provide some of that.

  4. Re:And we need this why? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sounds like manufacturing let them down. Also they were first into the cheap netbook market so there may have been a burst of demand.

    --
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