Tech News
Taiwan's Quanta to make 100-US-dollar laptops for poor kids
By DPA
Oct 18, 2006, 7:10 GMT

Taipei - The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will kick off next year with Taiwan's Quanta Computer Inc producing 100-US-dollar laptops for the world's poorest kids, Quanta said on Wednesday.

'We have received orders to manufacture 100-dollar laptops for Libya, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand. Production and shipment will begin in the second quarter next year,' Quanta deputy spokesman Lin Chun-chieh told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Lin refused to reveal how large the orders are because 'the orders keep coming,' but press reports said the order for Libya alone is 1.2 million laptops worth 250 million US dollars.

Lin said Quanta, the world's biggest notebook computer maker, is in charge of designing and manufacturing the 100-dollar laptops. The laptops will be made at Quanta's plant in Changshou, Jiansu Province, China.

Though a low-cost computer, the company will see profits as it will run on a Linux platform instead of Windows. 'So we don't have to pay OS (office system) fee to Microsoft,' said Lin.

The OLPC project was unveiled by MIT Media Lab's co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, now chairman of the non-profit association, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2005.

The goal is to revolutionize education in remote areas of developing nations by providing children with low-cost and power-saving laptops.

OLPC is funded by a number of sponsors, including AMD, Brightstar Corp, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corp, SES Global, Nortel Networks and Red Hat. Each company has donated 2 million US dollars.

Quanta is taking part in the project as a joint designer and sole manufacturer of the laptops.