XO-3
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OLPC XO-3 debut delayed till February as the quest continues for an 'unbreakable' screen
You'll read about many a wonder at CES this January, but you can cross the OLPC XO-3 off the list -- One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte told PC World that the slate's debut has been pushed back roughly 45 days, until the middle of February instead. Whether the Marvell Moby-based tablet turns out to be a sexy, paper-thin device or a chunky contraption wasn't discussed, but Negroponte did have a simple explanation for the delay -- he needed a suitable surface to cover that probable Pixel Qi touchscreen. "The issue has been really finding an unbreakable material," he said, hinting that "it may be glass or some flavor of glass," rather than plastic as originally planned. Might we suggest a taste test at the Corning laboratories, Mr. Negroponte? We hear they have a Gorilla that does quite nicely. Video after the break.
OLPC should have an XO-3 prototype ready by the end of the year
Last time we spied the XO-3 tablet concept from OLPC, we were told to expect the thing to ship in the far-distant year 2012. Much has changed since then in the tablet arena, however, and Nicholas Negroponte, the project's founder, is saying they'll have a working prototype ready by December of this year, to be shown off at CES in January of 2011. Many details are still up in the air, but the initial device will be designed for use by children in the oft-neglected developed world, "testing many of the things that combine a laptop, an iPad and a Kindle." Word is they'll be starting with that Marvell Moby reference design, with a 9-inch-ish dual mode LCD for outdoor readability (thanks to Pixel Qi, presumably). The prototype will have a glass screen, but the goal is "100 percent plastic, unbreakable and almost extruded out of a machine," said Negroponte, something that won't happen until 2012 most likely. The best, and possibly wildest, claim of all is the $75 price tag that they hope to slap on this thing when all is said and done. We suppose the veracity of that claim will come down to how long this actually takes to make it from prototype to production. There's video of NickNeg discussing it after the break.
OLPC shows off absurdly thin XO-3 concept tablet for 2012 (update: XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 coming first)
Still have a bit of faith left for the OLPC project? Good, you're gonna need it: designer Yves Behar has unveiled his latest concept design for the now-aiming-for-$75 vision, and it's all screen. Keeping with the newfound trend toward tablets, the XO-3 is an 8.5 x 11 touchscreen, coupled with a little folding ring in the corner for grip and a camera in the back. To keep things minimal the plan is to use Palm Pre-style induction charging, and less than a watt of power to keep an "8 gigaherz [sic]" (800MHz?) processor and a Pixel Qi screen powered. At half the thickness of an iPhone, this vision is obviously banking heavily on presumed technology advances by 2012 (the projected release date), but it's not too hard to see somebody making this form factor happen by then-ish. Nick Neg isn't all hubris, however: "Sure, if I were a commercial entity coming to you for investment, and I'd made the projections I had in the past, you wouldn't invest again, but we're not a commercial operation. If we only achieve half of what we're setting out to do, it could have very big consequences." Update: According to our man Nicholas Negroponte, who took time out of his busy schedule to email us with the info, there are two other variations of the XO headed our way before we see the XO-3. Nick says we'll see the XO-1.5 appear in January for around $200 -- an update to the current version. As we'd heard before, the 1.5 iteration will swap a VIA CPU for the current AMD one, and will double the speed as well as quadruple both the DRAM and Flash memory of the current version. Furthermore, he says that in early 2011 the XO-1.75 (replacing that psychotically awesome 2.0 dual screen model) will make its appearance, and will sport rubber bumpers on the outer casing, an 8.9-inch touchscreen display inside, and will run atop a Marvell ARM processor which will enable two times the speed at a quarter of the power usage. That version will sell for somewhere in the $175 range. Then, no 2.0... straight on to the XO-3.0! %Gallery-80794% [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
