OLPC gets a price hike and a launch window
Turns out that magical $100 figure was too good to be true, and Negroponte's OLPC project will get off the ground next year for somewhere around $130-$140 -- before shipping -- when it gets released for sale to governments next April. The hope is that the price can get down to $100 by the end of 2008, but Negroponte said manufacturing has to hit 5 to 6 million to get scale pricing on these. While the amount of RAM will effect pricing, the biggest factor right now is the display, which still isn't finished. According to Negroponte: "It has to be sunlight readable. That won't be done until August/September." After that there will be a beauty contest among three systems for the final production design, and then manufacturing will begin. A whole bunch of countries are currently interested in the idea, but we're guessing they'll want to see real deal before they commit to buy that one million unit minimum.
[Thanks, Alex N.]
