Wonder why they don't look at Via's C7-M? It's a great low-power platform, has *enough* processing power, and Intel still can't beat them for processing power/watt.
The OLPC XO isn't just a small laptop. As others have said, it can handle the dust and environment, but it's clearly more a learning tool than a laptop.
The builtin camera can have the AGC disabled so that it can be used for experiments with color and light levels.
The microphone port on the side can be used as a general-purpose analog data collection port, either biased, or not. It's not limited to audio, like most laptops.
The software has been specifically designed for classroom use, as there are facilities for finding a cool web page then forwarding it to everyone in your class, immediately.
And the UI you think you saw, that was worse than Win 3.1, was the basic UNIX TWM window manager, running just to see if the hardware works. There is a livecd you can download to try the whole system for yourself and see how it works.
It calculates protein foldings/interactions for theoretical drug research.
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
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