Kids laptops

One Laptop per Child
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a project of the One Laptop per Child Association, Inc. (OLPC), a U.S. non-profit organization. The organization is led by the Foundation's Chairman Nicholas Negroponte, and the Association's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby. OLPC is a non-profit organization funded by member organizations such as AMD, eBay, Google, News Corporation, Red Hat, and Marvell. Its current focus is on the development, construction and deployment of the XO-1 laptop and its successors.                                                            
History
At the 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced it would back the laptop. UNDP released a statement saying they would work with OLPC to deliver "technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries".^[1]
The project originally aimed for a price of 100 US dollars. In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: "It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140."^[2] A BBC news article in April 2010 indicated the price still remains above $200.
Mass production

Intel was a member of the association for a brief period in 2007. It resigned its membership on 3 January 2008, citing disagreements with requests from OLPC's founder, Nicholas Negroponte, for Intel to stop dumping their Classmate PCs.^[4][5]
Ivan Krstić (former OLPC Director of Security Architecture) resigned in late February 2008 because, he said, learning wasn't what the OLPC was about even for Negroponte (see quote below).^[6][7] On April 22, 2008, Walter Bender, who was the former President of Software and Content for the OLPC project, stepped down from his post and left OLPC to found Sugar Labs. Bender reportedly had a disagreement with Negroponte about the future of the OLPC and their future partnerships.^[6] Negroponte also showed some doubt about the exclusive use of open source software for the project^[8] and made suggestions supporting a move towards adding Windows XP which Microsoft was in the process of porting over to the XO hardware.^[9] Microsoft's Windows XP, however, is not seen by some as a sustainable operating system.^[10] Microsoft announced on May 16, 2008, that they have let them have Windows XP for $3 per computer.^[11] It would be offered as an option on XO-1 laptops and possibly be able to dual boot alongside Linux.^[12]
Charles Kane became the new President and Chief Operating Officer of the OLPC Association on May 2, 2008.^[13][14] In late 2008, the NYC Department of Education began a project to purchase large numbers of XO computers for use by New York schoolchildren.^[15]
Advertisements for OLPC began streaming on the video streaming website Hulu and others in 2008. One such ad has John Lennon advertising for OLPC, with an unknown voice actor redubbing over Lennon's voice.^[16]
The 2008 economic downturn and increased netbook competition reduced OLPC's annual budget from $12 million to $5 million and a major restructuring resulted effective January 7, 2009. Development of the Sugar operating environment was moved entirely into the community, the Latin America support organization was spun out and staff reductions, including Jim Gettys, affected approximately 50% of the paid employees. The remaining 32 staff members also saw salary reductions.

Technology
The XO-1, previously known as the "$100 Laptop" or "Children's Machine", is an inexpensive laptop computer designed to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world,^[19] to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves" (constructionist learning).^[20] The laptop is manufactured by the Taiwanese computer company Quanta Computer.
The rugged, low-power computers use flash memory instead of a hard drive, run a Fedora-based operating system and use the Sugar user interface.^[21] Mobile ad-hoc networking based on the 802.11s wireless mesh network protocol allows students to collaborate on activities and to share Internet access from one connection. The wireless networking has much greater range than typical consumer laptops. The XO-1 has also been designed to be lower cost and much longer-lived than typical laptops.Artical By:www.wikipedia
The laptops include an anti-theft system which can, optionally, require each laptop to periodically make contact with a server to renew its cryptographic lease token. If the cryptographic lease expires before the server is contacted, the laptop will be locked until a new token is provided. The contact may be to a country-specific server over a network or to a local, school-level server that has been manually loaded with cryptographic "lease" tokens that enable a laptop to run for days or even months between contacts. Cryptographic lease tokens can be supplied on a USB flash drive for non-networked schools.^[22] The mass production laptops are also tivoized, disallowing installation of additional software or replacement of the operating system. Users interested in development need to obtain the unlocking key separately (most developer laptops for Western users already come unlocked). It is claimed that locking prevents unintentional bricking and is part of the anti-theft system.^[23]
Microsoft developed a modified version of Windows XP and announced in May 2008 that Windows XP will be available for an additional cost of 10 dollars per laptop.
Criticism

 ^{Controversy regarding mission}

^{OLPC's dedication to "Free and open source" was questioned with their May 15, 2008, announcement that large-scale purchasers would be offered the choice to add an extra cost, special version of the proprietary Windows XP OS developed by Microsoft alongside the regular, free and open Linux-based "Sugar" OS. James Utzschneider, from Microsoft, said that initially only one operating system could be chosen.[71][72] OLPC, however, said that future OLPC work would enable XO-1 laptops to dual boot either the free and open Linux/Sugar OS or the proprietary Microsoft Windows XP. Negroponte further said that "OLPC will sell Linux-only and dual-boot, and will not sell Windows-only [XO-1 laptops]". OLPC released the first test firmware enabling XO-1 dual-boot on July 3, 2008.[71][73][74][75][76]
OLPC's stated ethos that "It's an education project, not a laptop project" was contradicted according to Ivan Krstić, OLPC's former Director of Security Architecture.[77]
Negroponte and Charles Kane made statements explaining OLPC's decision to enable XO-1 laptops to dual-boot either open source Fedora or proprietary Microsoft Windows XP:}

^{[Nicholas] Negroponte says that within OLPC, the open-source scrap had become a distraction. "I think that means and ends, as often happens, got confused," he says. "The mission is learning and children. The means of achieving that were, amongst others, open source and constructionism. In the process of doing that, open source in particular became an end in itself, and we made decisions along the way to remain very pure in open source that were not in the long-term interest of the project."}

^{—Nicholas Negroponte, May 2, 2008, [78]}

^{"The OLPC mission is a great endeavor, but the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible," [Charles Kane] said. "Whether that technology is from one operating system or another, one piece of hardware or another, or supplied or supported by one consulting company or another doesn't matter." "It's about getting it into kids' hands," he continued. "Anything that is contrary to that objective, and limits that objective, is against what the program stands for."}

^{—Charles Kane, OLPC President and COO, May 2, 2008, [78]}

^{Other discussions question whether OLPC laptops should be designed to promote anonymity or to facilitate government tracking of stolen laptops. A recent New Scientist article critiqued Bitfrost's P_THEFT security option, which allows each laptop to be configured to transmit an individualized, non}