CES 2007: One Laptop Per Child Project - FIRST LOOK review

We take a brief look at the $130 laptop

9 January 2007 4:33 GMT / By Stuart Miles

The One Laptop Per Child project made its physical début at CES 2007 in Las Vegas and Pocket-lint was there to snap some photos and have a go.

Smaller than you would probably expect, the device is very lightweight and very plasticy - we aren't sure how it will stand up to the rigours of an African desert for example.

The Linux-based laptops come with their own power sources (including wind-up) and offer a dual-mode display, which gives users a full-colour, transmissive DVD mode and a secondary black and white reflective and sunlight-readable display.

The computers operate at 500MHz, about half the processor speed of commercial laptops, and will run on Linux rather than Microsoft's or Apple's operating systems as previously hoped by the two companies.

The interface, like the bright green design, was very basic and depending on how many programs you run will depend on the overall speed and performance.

We had a play on the open source laptop with over five applications running and until we closed some of them it was very slow going.

Applications included a music game, art drawing package and most importantly a word processor, which was very cool.

First Impressions

Priced at around $130, although not commercially available to you and me, expect millions of these machines to surface around the world in the next couple of months.

Review Recap

Made by: OLPC
Price as reviewed: £70
The good: Cheap, easy to use, Wi-Fi, word processor
The bad: Plastically, not sure it would last in the desert
First Impressions: Expect millions of these machines to surface around the world in the next couple of months