April 27, 2009, 7:41 pm
The government of India has signed an agreement with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and will purchase 250,000 of the organization’s XO laptops. The machines will be distributed to students throughout the country. India’s decision to embrace OLPC is a bit unexpected in light of the country’s past antagonism towards the project.
OLPC is a nonprofit organization that builds low-cost education laptops to sell in bulk to governments of developing countries. The project, first unveiled in 2005, has faced many challenges and has been forced to significantly cut staff and reduce the scope of its vision. Despite these setbacks, the program is still marching on and continuing to sell units as it works on an updated model and an innovative next-generation version.
