One Laptop Per Child with a 100 dollar tablet

Nicholas Negroponte, who is behind the OLPC project (One Laptop Per Child ), is now looking at a 100 dollar tactile tablet project which uses Marvell’s Moby design as a their base.

After having tried to offer a laptop for 100 dollars in emerging markets through the OLPC initiative (One Laptop Per Child), although not quite succeeding, Nicholas Negroponte is now interested in tablet tablets, still at a price of 100 dollars.

He is looking to follow the model put forward in March by Marvell with their Moby tablet, with the chipset manufacturer confirming that they could use this as a basis for tablets sold at 99 dollars. This is only half surprising considering that Marvell were involved in the conception of the OLPC computer, as indicated during the presentation of the Moby tablet.

To reach such a low price, the tablet will have to be manufactured in large volumes and therefore be adapted for numerous uses ranging from education to healthcare. The tablets tactile aspect means that it may be able to get around some of the obstacles witnessed in the OLPC program, like the obligation to have the keyboard adapted to non-Latin languages.


Android rather than Windows 7
Weili Dai, co-fonder of Marvell, has promised a tablet which could come with a webcam, WiFi, a multi-touch tactile screen and performance that is capable of displaying HD video in 3D thanks to the presence of the Armada 600 applications processor belonging to their new processor family unveiled at the end of last year. It was also pointed out that it would be possibly to connect peripheral devices like a keyboard and mouse.

When asked the sensitive question about the operating system, which was often a problem sighted during the development of OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte stated that he planed on looking at open source options. To start with, Android seems to be a more appropriate choice than Windows 7 which is considered to be too resource intensive for this kind of product.

The new tablet being pushed by the OLPC initiative should be unveiled during the CES 2011 show in Las Vegas next January.