"$100" OLPC XO-1 to cost at least $188, over $200 in Uruguay

The "$100 laptop" from the OLPC Foundation is in no way a "$100 laptop." The latest price hike by the Foundation pushes the overall cost of each XO-1 machine up to $188, which is a fair amount higher than the $176 that the machine was said to cost back in May. On a per country basis, the laptops could cost even more than that, with OLPCNews reporting that the cost per laptop in Uruguay is $205 due to a partnership with Brighstar Uruguay SA. Negroponte, maybe it's time to change that "$100 laptop" tagline.

Read - Nonprofit group hikes price of "$100 laptop" (Reuters)
Read - OLPC XO-1: Now $205 in Uruguay (OLPCNews)

[Michael Walters @ Sep 15th 2007 5:58PM]

The Asus Eee is looking better and better...

[Invisiblemoose @ Sep 15th 2007 6:26PM]

Agreed. Though the Eee's price continues to rise as well, at least as far as we know. I hope Asus comes out with some real official info soon...

[scott @ Sep 15th 2007 6:03PM]

Why the hell is the price of technology going up in this instance? Tech is supposed to decrease in cost over time, especially with mass production.

[steve @ Sep 15th 2007 6:09PM]

It was never actually 100 dollars to begin with. They set out to make a marketable $100 laptop, but came to the conclusion that they could not do anything with that price point, so they upped it to this. It's not a matter of it becoming more expensive, but being more realistic. With time, the price will come back down again, but that hasn't happened yet.

[wayan @ Sep 16th 2007 10:09AM]

I think the reason we're seeing the XO price increase is the lack of government orders to date reducing the number of computers Quanta is willing to make on spec. They're even delaying production again! http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/production/xo_laptop_production_delay.html

[ScOObyDoo @ Sep 15th 2007 6:28PM]

All these third world kids should just come over here on Black Friday and pick up a stack of $300 Toshiba's with Vista. Seems like a much better deal, and more efficient for browsing porn with.

[ms @ Sep 15th 2007 6:29PM]

Let's just call it the £100 laptop and be done with this nonsense about the name!

[jhogan @ Sep 15th 2007 8:14PM]

100 pounds is too heavy for a laptop.

[macona @ Sep 17th 2007 6:16PM]

But its harder to steal that way...

[dj-kenpo @ Sep 15th 2007 6:30PM]

who needs fresh water, what we need is the net. the word surfing implies water does it not? now take your overpriced tech that you don't need, quite complaining about aids, and look at all the things you should be buying.

gawd.
3rd worlders are so not up with their priorities.

[Eugene @ Sep 16th 2007 12:03AM]

It's not so much the third world that has their priorities in a knot, it's wealthy western technocrats who think that if a kid can read email and blog, she won't mind so much the foul water she has to draw from the stream 5 miles away, or being drafted into an "army" or suffering from a curable disease, or being sold off by her staving parents to be a factory worker or sex slave.

[dj-kenpo @ Sep 16th 2007 10:37AM]

ya that's what I was saying, it was sarcasm. I was blaming western business.

[Derek Peavey @ Sep 16th 2007 4:34PM]

Give a man a fish. You feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
Give a man a computer and tell him where to learn to fish and he'll look at porn.

Darwin in action. They choose their own priorities.

[Gonzalo @ Sep 15th 2007 6:31PM]

Yeah?? I'm from Uruguay, where did you get those prices? The OLPC initiative, has just hited one small school, named Villa Cardal, and there's no way that the program gets full scale...
Besides that, tax gets the prices even twice around here (the cheapest "regular" laptop, an Acer Aspire,cost around 1000 dollars, and is priced as half on Walmart).
I still wait for Asus EEE Pc, even if is priced at 280 (i'm ready to pay more, for the 512 RAM version)...from the USA, of course (no way i'll buy it here, i'm sure it will be over 400 bucks the cheapest version)

Sorry the grammar

[Orion @ Sep 15th 2007 6:34PM]

To be fair, the value of the dollar isn't helping them much.

[Gonzalo @ Sep 15th 2007 6:46PM]

All right, i'm just checking the OLPC provider, on Uruguay ...and guess what? It's the same one that gets Palm!!! So forget about low prices, as I told you before
U$S100 PC...my ass (well, maybe on 1st world country but here...for example, a Video Ipod, not the new ones, cost 500 dollars)

[strider_mt2k @ Sep 15th 2007 7:01PM]

"The laptop formerly known as..."

[Gonzalo @ Sep 15th 2007 7:12PM]

Ahhhhh...guys,you lighted up my hate for my own 3rd world country (don't worry, it'll pass in a few minutes)
Wanna laugh? Check this...http://www.gamestop.com.uy/
How much will that cost on any decent country (i'm referring to the PS3)

[ark_v2 @ Sep 15th 2007 7:32PM]

It's too expensive for what it offers, still, it's in a price range that is far below the other alternatives'. That sucks.

[rudebo @ Sep 15th 2007 7:45PM]

whats wrong with refurbished computers from 10 years ago ?

[AmazingRobie @ Sep 15th 2007 8:20PM]

Exactly. What ever happened to reusing old stuff instead of building new stuff.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

[DaMan09 @ Sep 15th 2007 7:47PM]

Q: ah whats another $100?

A: 4 months worth of food.

[Sturmgeist @ Sep 16th 2007 6:15AM]

Yeah, but food is a bad teacher.

Plus, the OLPC XO-1 isn't aimed at those least developed countries but rather at those established enough to afford this education like Nigeria and India.

[Rodrigo @ Sep 15th 2007 7:50PM]

Well, you know, if it costed about $100 then how much of the pie would take the son of the actual president of Uruguay :)
cheers from the south

[Gonzalo @ Sep 15th 2007 8:33PM]

Well, at least our president is doing something, but actually he doesn't get any money, it all goes to the companies that export all the technological stuff here,making a monopoly and fixing the prices as they want to make profits.
The sad story, is that some people think that technology is affordable around here. And myself? i'm writing this with my 500 bucks, cheap eMachines from the US, because there is no way that i'll buy something here (why? to give my money to these guys..)

[Shane @ Sep 15th 2007 8:13PM]

They did change the new of the laptop from the $100 laptop to 'One Laptop Per Child' or OLPC.

[Sean O @ Sep 15th 2007 8:16PM]

The US Dollar is tanking. This thing probably still is $100 if you go by what the currency was worth back when the project started.

[MARSHAK @ Sep 16th 2007 1:25AM]

hell yea its tanking. I love it. I've been buying tons of crap from the USA this year. It is so damn cheap! Canadians have been importing cars from the USA like crazy. I plan to do the same soon if it stays this way.

[thekid @ Sep 15th 2007 8:30PM]

I dread reading the comments every time there's a post about the olpc here. I would expect the comments made here at a non tech blog (AARP or something, idk) but it's truly sad when half the comments every time are either "...black friday blah blah..." or "...eee is cooler blah blah...". I suppose I should make a template that I can paste explaining that the olpc is designed for 3rd world and that a toshiba, dell, eee, whatever would last about as long as a full battery charge. For now I just wanted to say, anyone who seriously thinks any standard consumer laptop is remotely close to being an alternative to the olpc doesn't know enough about the olpc.

[Andy @ Sep 15th 2007 8:57PM]

Lots of good comments here. I agree with: "these items go way beyond a simple 'consumer PC.' I really wonder how the world will change as the first million ship next year. I blogged a little about it today (sorry, the link... http://justapersona.com/2007/09/google-maps-progress-on-international.html) and it seems kind of silly to haggle over "Well, they said $100!" Whatever. The project is a amazing, the progress is unprecedented, and as some point out here: $100 5 years ago has lost a LOT of value relatively in the mean time - whatever!

[Adam @ Sep 15th 2007 9:02PM]

It's going to get to the point where these countries and communities should just buy a cheap Dell. Maybe Panasonic should make a Toughbook for this market.

[Dwarden @ Sep 15th 2007 9:37PM]

this remind me on some movie ... from 99.99$ product it was all of sudden 499$ :)

[Iandefor @ Sep 15th 2007 11:25PM]

Has it been officially referred to the $100 laptop since it got the name of OLPC? I thought that was the whole deal with the name. It was no longer "The $100 laptop" and got a real name- OLPC. People just stuck to using the $100 laptop name because it was more recognizable than OLPC.

[angelsvairwaves1 @ Sep 16th 2007 12:38AM]

blasphemous!

[MARSHAK @ Sep 16th 2007 12:49AM]

FUCK! MAN, I TOTALLY WISH I WAS THIS GUY! he probably got money or women for this. i never get first post :(

[Ben Hobbs @ Sep 16th 2007 2:24AM]

I don't understand the point of this. I see normal laptops for sale for $300, if you simply massed produced the lowest priced normal laptop and threw Ubuntu on it, it would be way cheaper than this.

[rrandrews @ Sep 16th 2007 4:15AM]

"Maybe it's time to change that '$100 laptop' tagline."

I'm pretty sure they did. A long time ago.

[Aaron @ Sep 19th 2007 5:52PM]

hello

[Jawad Zakariya @ Sep 16th 2007 5:12AM]

Yes, clearly some of the people here have no idea what the OLPC is and are making uneducated comparisons with PC's from other manufacturers.
Also it is clear that most of these people have no idea what the realities of living in a third world country are. What will you do with your Asus when the electricity is off for 5 hours, for example? Use it as a door stopper?
The OLPC is a very well thought out project with the potential of making a REAL difference to the lives of third world children. The price is not a major concern in this case anyway because the machines are mostly going to be distributed free of cost by donor organizations. The only difference potentially that a price of $188 vs $100 is going to make is that there might be less computers distributed initially, but with larger orders for countries such as Pakistan with huge populations, those numbers will come down overtime.

[james in hk @ Sep 16th 2007 5:49AM]

this is a long term project, right? Quibbling about the price today is petty - $100 was a worthy and almost incredulous target back when they started. I reckon they should rename it "the $20 laptop" just to reignite that engineering & technical problem-solving passion which kick-started the project.

[Source @ Sep 16th 2007 10:27AM]

Does anybody know something about the Medison Celebrity, is it real?

[Matthew @ Sep 16th 2007 10:11PM]

cool. I didn't know gumby had a computer

[Charlie @ Nov 12th 2007 8:56PM]

Uruguay is not the traditional "third world country" that comes to mind. In fact, the term developing nation is much more appropriate. The country has a sound infrastructure, no one lacks essential government services, the nation has a stable constitution as well as freedom of speech, and it has one of the highest literacy rates in the world., and it is also populated almost entirely by whites. It would probably be more accurate to compare Uruguay to a developing nation in Eastern Europe.