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13 Oct 2006
The Libyan government has agreed to purchase 1.2 million laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, according to reports in The New York Times.
The deal, reported to be worth $250m, would make Libya the first country to officially place an order for the 2B1 laptops.
OLPC has said that five to 10 million units would need to be pre-ordered before full-scale production and distribution could begin.
The OLPC project was founded by Nicholas Negroponte and officially unveiled in 2005. The goal is to provide the low-cost machines as a way of linking children in developing countries to educational resources on the internet.
The prototype designs of the 2B1 run on a low-power AMD processor and carry 128MB of RAM. Current plans are for the computers to run a Linux operating system, and to have manually rechargeable batteries.
A pilot for the project is scheduled to begin in early 2007 in Brazil, Argentina, Libya, and Thailand.
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Rumor: You got that right
I don't know where John Markoff got his story, but it is rather exaggerated. OLPC and Libya have a Memorandum of Understanding to work toward a project, not a contract. No other countries have signed on in any form.
Posted by: Edward Cherlin 15 Oct 2006