Low-cost computers meant to usher poor children worldwide into the digital age are being mass produced in China as US nonprofit One Laptop Per Child strives to deliver on its promise.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project is in the final steps to finally ship the first laptops to poor children living in poor countries.

India's official response to a project to spread low-cost computers among school students was not too enthusiastic. But that has not stopped techies from seizing the opportunity. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association is a non-profit organisation, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab in the US, set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 "$100 laptop".

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) first started, they had an incredibly innovative idea: create cheap laptops for children in developing countries. Unfortunately, the program hit to major stumbling blocks: First, the laptop they came out with cost twice as much as had been planned. Second, everyone else started making cheap laptops, too.

"The One Laptop Per Child project, launched by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte in 2003, was supposed to lead millions of children around the world to information technology and freedom [...] I now expect that the main effect of the OLPC project—if it succeeds—will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft users.

Two teenage sisters from Boston, along with their family and school, have joined forces with an American non-profit organization to provide laptop computers to underprivileged children in South Africa.

$100 for a laptop for a child in the poorest countries is still too much for Nicholas Negroponte. The founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, and founder and current chairman of the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) wants to give portable computers to all the children in developing countries.

I have been asked to review the XO computers from the One Laptop Per Child project. This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences, as well as those of some children with whom I will be working. I could easily gush over it or complain about how small the keyboard is in a single article, but I think the XO requires a more in-depth review than that. So I hope you'll join me as I explore these interesting tools aimed at children.

Intel insists that its project to make low-cost laptops for school children in poorer nations began nearly three years ago, before it heard of Nicholas Negroponte’s initiative, One Laptop Per Child.