Quanta planning $200 OLPC for developed nations

by Darren Murph, posted Mar 28th 2007 at 4:13PM

A lot of good things can happen when you receive a million orders for your product, such as finding the ability to add speedier hardware, offer up new renditions, and of course, break into new markets. Such is the case with Quanta, as it is reportedly aiming at bringing a device "similar to the OLPC to developed markets when the time is right," and if all goes as planned, it'll hit "for as little as $200." Of course, it was noted that the low-end versions would likely arrive sans a hard drive, with diminutive screens, and utilize open source software, but there's currently not much room to grumble if your laptop budget tops out at two Benjamins. In a quote that certainly made a case for CE-Oh No He Didn't, Michael Wang (Quanta's president) frankly stated that there were "a lot of poor people in developed countries, too," simultaneously dissing those without a large deal of disposable income and mislabeling the millionaire tinkers who'd probably pick one up just to fiddle with. No hints at a release date just yet, but if the sluggish rollout of the OLPCs is a halfway accurate benchmark, we'd guess that this one's a good ways out.

[Thanks, Charbax]

Filed under: Laptops

Tags: $200 pc, $200Pc, business, cheap, commercialization, developed market, DevelopedMarket, industry, olpc, poor, quanta

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wayan @ Mar 28th 2007 4:22PM

So maybe this is a solution to the ever-preset problem of OLPC eBay sales, rumors of OLPC retail sales, and a whole other way to get the Children's Machine XO in USA schools: direct parental purchase of OLPC-equivalents through normal retail channels.

http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/countries/

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Chris @ Mar 28th 2007 5:04PM

having played with the OS in vmware, I'm not really sure how this do as a primary "family" pc. I guess if the main purpose of such a purchase is for the kids to hammer out reports then it might be just fine, and at $200 won't be too tough a purchase for most people.

A more interesting use though is a secondary PC. Since it's durable and portable it is no big deal to take it from room to room in the house as needed. family pc in teh living room but too noisy for the kids to work? take the XO to a different room.

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