Marvell brought its XO 3.0 tablet—the brainchild of One Laptop Per Child—to Las Vegas ahead of CES, where Electronista took the opportunity to finally handle the education-focused device. Although the tablet shares many hardware features with Android-based offerings, the physical build and OLPC's own Linux-based Sugar OS offer a much different experience.
The One Laptop Per Child project's long-in-waiting XO-3 tablet, now called the XO 3.0, will get its formal unveiling at CES. The eight-inch, 1024x768 slate will have a ruggedized body to survive rural schools and, like the original notebooks, consumes very little power. OLPC notes that it can take energy from a solar panel and that a hand crank can give it 10 minutes of power for every minute of turning, letting it work even in remote areas where electricity isn't guaranteed.
The OLPC engineering team this week announced new software is on the way that would bring with it multi-touch support. The updated Sugar OS to make this possible will make its debut in the upcoming XO-1.75 child notebook. The embedded controller will have an open codebase, with one small exception, and is believed to become the first notebook with open embedded controller code.
Microsoft has finally completed the OLPC version of Windows XP, the company has announced. The scaled-down operating system has been released to manufacturing, and is being installed on select versions of the OLPC group's XO notebook, intended mainly for schools in poor countries. The computer uses bare-bones components to reduce cost to approximately $200, such as a smaller screen and flash-based program storage.
