OLPC Gets $5.6M Grant To Develop Tablet With Marvell

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."'"

Comments

And we need this why?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

The OLPC project went nowhere. They took money and work from the community, then they sold themselves to microsoft, and achieved none of all their goals. The project went nowhere.

There are already awesome tablets like the aPad that exist right now and retail for less than 200 dollars. I'm sure you could drive them below 100 if you built enough and bought them altogether.

Why are we still listening to the OLPC's pipe dreams about developing hardware? They already proved that they can't get anything done, and that they will sell out if necessary. Want to do something? The product you want is already out there. Buy it, drive its price down, and start delivering.