Late last year Uruguay landed its first shipment of 100,000 units of the much lauded, sometimes criticised XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation. Buoyed by that success, Walter Bender, president software and content at OLPC effused over the next countries in line for the little green machine. The question is, however, can the likes of Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Haiti, Rwanda, Mongolia and a myriad of other impoverished countries stump up with the cash needed to join the OLPC bandwagon? The sums are not that difficult to do.

Thank you for your interest in One Laptop Per Child. Our mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have little resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 a year per child.

Walter Bender, President of Software/Content and COO for the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), Friday blasted Intel (NSDQ:INTC) Corp. for what he called its "disingenuous" dealings with the non profit organization.

It has taken more than two years, but the One Laptop Per Child initiative has finally released its much-anticipated laptop: the OLPC XO-1. The XO-1 costs $200 each to donate, but for a limited time — until Dec. 31, 2007 — people can avail themselves of the "Give One, Get One" promotion to give a $399 donation ($200 of which is tax-deductible).

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an amazing project that aims to give every child in the world a laptop with a cost of just $100 a laptop and they also are windup so in countries where there is no or little electricity you can wind the OLPC up to get it working.

"China should be an obvious beneficiary of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Scheme, which seeks to provide robust $100 portable Internet computers to children in developing countries."

I had to wake up early to do it, but I was able to order an XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (and donate another at the same time).

Top technology executives brushed him aside when he first raised his vision, but today Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child (OLPC) device has reached 900,000 children and inspired a whole new--and growing--market segment known as netbooks.

The one laptop per child (OLPC) project, a brainchild of MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, will soon find its way into Indian homes.