Compiled from an article by The Verge: OLPC's $100 laptop was going to change the world
This computer was supposed to save the world.
In the second half of 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, pulled the cloth off a small green computer with a bright yellow crank. This little computer was the first working prototype developed by Negroponte's newly established nonprofit organization, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and it was called the "green machine" or the "$100 laptop." The audience had never seen such a device, whether at the UN Technology Summit in Tunisia or elsewhere around the globe.
After a passionate introduction by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Negroponte began to explain. This $100 laptop would have all the capabilities of a regular computer, but it required so little power that children could power it by hand-cranking. It was sturdy enough for children to use anywhere, not just in schools. A mesh network would allow one laptop to extend an internet connection to many other laptops. A Linux-based operating system would enable children to fully operate the computer—reportedly, OLPC turned down a free Mac OS X license offered by Steve Jobs. As its name suggested, the laptop was priced at just $100, while its competitors cost $1,000 or more.
"We believe we can provide hundreds of millions of these machines to children around the world," Negroponte promised, "It's not just $100. The price will go down." He hinted at large-scale manufacturing and procurement partners and demonstrated the laptop's multifunctional hardware, which could fold into a thick e-reader, a simple gaming device, or a mini television.
Then, Negroponte and Annan raised two OLPC laptops for a photo, with reporters urging them to showcase the unique crank of the machines. Annan's crank handle almost immediately fell off. As he calmly reattached it, Negroponte spun the laptop halfway around and placed it on the table. He awkwardly lifted the laptop a few inches, trying to make space for a full rotation. "Maybe later..." his voice trailed off, and then he sat down to answer questions from the audience.
This moment was brief, but it perfectly foreshadowed how critics would view OLPC years later: as a flashy, clever, idealistic project that was crushed upon its first encounter with reality.
If you remember OLPC, you might also recall the hand-crank. This was OLPC's most eye-catching technological innovation—it was pure vaporware (a product promoted before it was fully developed). After Negroponte's announcement, designers almost immediately abandoned the feature, as cranking would put stress on the laptop itself, and children in very poor areas could not conserve energy. Each OLPC computer came with a standard power adapter.
By the time OLPC officially launched in 2007, the "green machine"—once a star in the 21st-century educational technology field—had become a symbol of the tech industry's hubris, a generic American-style solution to complex global problems. But more than a decade later, the project's legacy is far more complicated than a simple cautionary tale. The project's laptops are still being produced, with a new model expected to launch later this year.
People are still talking about that crank.
Negroponte describes himself as an optimist, and his job is to create the future. He is a professor with decades of experience at MIT, having co-founded the influential Media Lab in 1985. He was one of the early supporters of Wired magazine, where he wrote a column promoting the transformative power of technology. He has a long-standing passion for education—he believes computers can be revolutionary.
Negroponte believes in constructivism, an educational theory that children should learn by making things and solving problems, rather than completing worksheets or attending lectures. In 1982, Negroponte collaborated with a colleague at MIT and key constructivist Seymour Papert at a French-funded research center in Senegal, teaching children to program on Apple II computers.
By the late 1990s, children's computing initiatives were a major political priority in various states. President Bill Clinton popularized the concept of the "digital divide" between the rich and poor, and some American schools began distributing personal computers to students to bridge that gap. Microsoft and Toshiba sponsored a laptop distribution project called "Anytime Anywhere Learning," while Maine funded a project from Papert himself.
However, Negroponte was more interested in students who might never have seen a laptop. In 1999, he and his wife opened a school in the remote village of Reaksmei in Cambodia, equipped with satellite dishes, generators, and rugged Panasonic Toughbook laptops.
This was a pivotal moment for Negroponte. He believed the project was successful, and he discussed with reporters how children would use laptops as the only source of light in their homes. "It's talking about both a metaphorical and a real thing," he once joked. However, most schools in developing countries could not afford Toughbooks. They needed a new type of device.
"How do we take these ideas that we think have worked successfully for 40 years and scale them up?" Walter Bender said. He is a colleague of Negroponte and a co-founder of OLPC. "Negroponte believed the real problem was not a lack of good ideas. The real problem was access to computers."
OLPC is not just a laptop; it is a philosophy. Negroponte insisted that children need to personally own computers so they will invest in maintaining them. They should be able to use computers anywhere, not just under the supervision of teachers. For inspiration, he cited educational researcher Sugata Mitra's famous "Hole-In-The-Wall" experiment, where children in a slum in Delhi taught themselves to use computers. Mitra's vision was simpler than OLPC's, but both projects focused on distributing computers. The innate curiosity of children was to be expected.
This is a thought-provoking idea, and Negroponte's OLPC plan maintained a balance between ambition and arrogance. He claimed the organization would not simply sell hundreds of millions of devices; it wouldn't even accept orders for fewer than 1 million. This laptop was not only sturdy; it was sturdy enough to be tossed around the room—he happily demonstrated this feature in interviews.
These statements made headlines. "We won't have this conversation—ten years from now, OLPC still won't be recognized by many—if they hadn't succeeded from the start," Christoph Derndorfer said, the former editor of the now-defunct blog OLPC News.
But OLPC's excessive focus on high-tech hardware left some skeptics concerned, including attendees at the Tunisia summit. One attendee said she would prefer "clean water and real schools" over laptops, while another believed OLPC was a marketing strategy from the U.S. "Under the guise of being nonprofit, millions of laptops will be sold to our government," he complained. In the tech community, there was skepticism about the laptop's design. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett referred to OLPC's toy prototype as a "little gadget for $100," while Bill Gates particularly disliked the screen, telling reporters, "Oh my, find a decent computer where you can actually read text."
Even OLPC's fans had their doubts. "We were excited about the prospects but a bit afraid of overly simplistic plans or a lack of planning," Derndorfer recalled. OLPC News may have been a passionate supporter of the OLPC initiative, but it was also a relentless gadfly—its first archived post quoted a ZDNet report titled "OLPC is not a good start."
And in 2005, Negroponte's laptop didn't exist at all. The OLPC prototype was merely a model. It had not yet signed contracts with manufacturers, let alone priced a product below $100. Breakthrough technologies like the crank and mesh networking system were still largely theoretical.
Rabi Karmacharya—whose nonprofit educational organization, Open Learning Exchange Nepal, runs one of the longest-standing OLPC programs—said the utopian hype about the $100 self-powered computer was not helpful for those trying to sell the OLPC program to local governments. It distracted from the commitment to the OLPC program: a small, low-power laptop at an unbelievably low price.
Despite the clumsy launch of the laptop in Tunisia, within a month, OLPC had struck a deal with Taiwanese computer manufacturer Quanta, whose founder, Barry Lam, liked the project's humanitarian mission. OLPC announced plans to launch the laptop by the end of 2006, delivering 1 million laptops to seven countries and providing slightly fewer laptops to developer communities elsewhere. Quanta was even supposed to explore developing a commercial version of the laptop.
OLPC achieved real technological breakthroughs. In its early concept designs, the laptop used a rear-projection screen that made it look tent-like; the final product featured a custom LCD display designed by Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Mary Lou Jepsen. The screen switched between full color and black-and-white modes, consuming a fraction of the energy required by standard displays. Its manufacturing cost was only $35, more than Negroponte initially wanted, but still very cheap.
The first prototype of OLPC looked like a regular computer, albeit in bright green and book-sized. Acclaimed designer Yves Béhar quickly joined nearly every aspect of the laptop's aesthetic design. Béhar said they spent nearly a year sending prototypes to schools around the world for feedback, gradually compromising between appearance and practicality.
The result was a distinctive machine called the XO-1: a green and white laptop with rounded corners, a rotating "neck" instead of a standard hinge, and a thick bezel surrounding the 7.5-inch screen. Every feature on the XO-1 was designed with purpose. Its screen folded into the keyboard to become a tablet, controlled by several buttons on its bezel.
Ear-like antennas could flip to extend its Wi-Fi range while protecting the laptop's ports when folded. The decorative XO logo came in hundreds of colors, allowing children to distinguish their laptops. A dust-proof single-piece rubber keyboard made it easy to press any key. "Some countries used their own local language as their first keyboard," Béhar said.
Meanwhile, Walter Bender was developing a lightweight operating system designed for children. Sugar OS was designed on the basis of Red Hat Linux, and its open-source design allowed children to freely operate the laptop's core firmware. Sugar's application icons were not standard desktop computing icons but arranged like a digital bracelet—simple animal circles, musical notes, and shooting stars. Bender recalled, "It was very tool-oriented: doing things, tools for doing things. It wasn't course-oriented. It wasn't a bunch of exercises."
With headlines like "The Laptop That Will Save the World" in The New York Times and millions of units sold, OLPC seemed poised for success. Then, everything began to unravel.
After announcing the "$100 laptop," OLPC had a job to do: make a laptop that cost $100. As the team developed the XO-1, they slowly realized this was impossible.
According to Bender, OLPC managed to bring the laptop's cost down to $130, but that was only because it stripped away so many features that the laptop was nearly unusable. Even when its price rose to around $180, the design still had significant trade-offs. The XO-1 was easy to disassemble—there were even spare screws inside its handle. But things like the screen could only be replaced with OLPC-specific parts. Solid-state drives were sturdier than traditional hard drives, but they were so expensive that the XO-1 could only accommodate 1 GB of data. Some users complained that the single-piece rubber keyboard became unusable after too much typing. The internet sharing system was nearly useless and was quickly removed from Sugar.
While Sugar was an elegant operating system, some potential buyers were skeptical of anything that wasn't Microsoft Windows. They wanted students to learn an operating system they would use later in life, not just the XO-1.
OLPC even undermined the advantages of the XO-1 through overselling. "Utopianism set unrealistic expectations for what the laptop should be able to do," Morgan Ames said, a researcher at Berkeley who is currently writing a book about OLPC. This included Negroponte's laptop tossing demonstrations. "When you're talking about laptops being used by children surrounded by concrete floors and cobblestone streets, a lot of damage really shamed the project. Because they hoped these laptops would be more indestructible."
As OLPC had focused too much on cost, Bender began to worry that people viewed the project as a hardware startup rather than an educational initiative. He recalled arguing with Negroponte about the laptop's name: not "the $100 laptop," Bender preferred to call it "the children's machine." He said, "I think we got a lot of attention from 'the $100 laptop' because regular laptops cost over $1,000, so it was a very bold statement. But we were ruined by that slogan—because we set an expectation about price rather than what the machine was actually for."
While OLPC was still designing the XO-1, Intel announced it was also developing a low-cost educational laptop. The Classmate PC would be as small and sturdy as OLPC's design but would run the more familiar Windows XP operating system, priced between $200 and $400. As OLPC's full rollout declined in 2007, its $100 price tag gradually disappeared, and Intel shipped the first Classmate PCs to Brazil and Mexico.
Negroponte was furious. He vehemently criticized Intel, accusing it of encroaching on OLPC's target market and selling laptops below cost to destroy the nonprofit. "Intel should be ashamed of itself," he said. "It's just—it's disgraceful."
OLPC prided itself on not being a tech company, with almost no experience in hardware manufacturing. It announced incredible sales figures but saw buyers scale back or withdraw from purchases. Reports indicated that India, one of OLPC's initial seven customers, killed the deal due to long-standing discord with the Media Lab. In a particularly painful loss, Libya canceled an order for 1.2 million XO-1 laptops, opting instead for Classroom PCs.
Bender believed that if OLPC had focused less on technical efficiency, it might have closed more deals. "Every conversation we had with any head of state—every time—they said, 'Can we manufacture laptops in our country?'" he said. "We knew that by producing laptops in Shanghai, we could make them cheaper. What we didn't realize was that price wasn't what they cared about. They wanted dignity, not price. They were asking us about control and ownership of the project." OLPC had manufactured a computer that could withstand dust and drops, but it had not considered political turmoil.
As development dragged on, the XO-1 began to look less impressive technologically. By mid-2007, Taiwanese company Asus released an eye-catching new computer called the Eee PC, offering a cheap, compact laptop without OLPC or Intel's educational branding. The Eee PC had many of the XO-1's shortcomings: slow performance, a small screen, a tiny hard drive, and a cramped keyboard. But the $399 laptop achieved unexpected success. It sold 5 million units in its first year, and other laptop manufacturers quickly released their own "netbook" computers, fueling a boom in cheap, small laptops.
Meanwhile, OLPC's own prospects looked increasingly dim. A report in 2007 indicated that the first production run of the XO-1 would be a mere 300,000 laptops. The final numbers weren't so bad. OLPC launched the "Give One Get One" program, where people paid $400 to buy one laptop for themselves and one for a student, raising $35 million and selling 162,000 laptops. OLPC struck relatively large deals with Mexico, Uruguay, and Peru, selling about 600,000 XO-1s by the end of that year.
Even so, this was far from the initial estimates of 5 to 15 million. "I underestimated the difference between shaking hands with heads of state and getting them to write checks," Negroponte finally admitted. "Yes, it's disappointing."
The launch of the XO-1 was supposed to be just the beginning for OLPC—but for two of the organization's three co-founders, it was nearly the end. In early 2008, Mary Lou Jepsen left OLPC to start a low-power display company called Pixel Qi. A few months later, OLPC took a step that Bender considered unforgivable: it violated its commitment to open-source software by partnering with Microsoft to install Windows on the XO-1.
OLPC's hardware and software divisions parted ways, while Bender continued to manage its software at an independent organization called Sugar Labs. Ultimately, OLPC's Windows XP model stalled in testing, while the laptop continued to run Sugar. "The only thing I did was stop getting paid," Bender joked. "While I'm not very smart, I'm happy."
In May 2008, OLPC announced a futuristic dual-screen laptop called the XO-2, but as the U.S. fell into a deep recession, the organization found itself in trouble. When it attempted to raise funds through a second "Give One Get One" promotion, its revenue was less than a tenth of the previous campaign. Negroponte did not anticipate this; he slashed the program's budget, halved its staff, and created two independent organizations to manage it. His own "OLPC Foundation" in Boston would develop new hardware—though not the XO-2, which was unceremoniously canceled. The Miami-based "OLPC Association," led by his friend Rodrigo Arboleda, would distribute its existing laptops.
This shifted OLPC's operational base closer to Latin America, where most of its laptops were located. Peru ordered nearly 1 million XO-1 computers, but the project was plagued by logistical issues as these machines were sent to schools with poor power supply, and teachers received almost no support or training. In Uruguay, a smaller project performed better, distributing 400,000 laptops among all elementary school students nationwide. This was a real victory for OLPC, but by the time it happened, many had already deemed the initiative a failure.
OLPC's partnership with Microsoft alienated the open-source community, resulting in little to show for it. OLPC had experimented with an American project in Birmingham, Alabama, but the project's main contact—the mayor of Birmingham—was arrested for accepting millions in bribes. In 2009, TechCrunch labeled OLPC's laptops as "the biggest product failure of the decade," attributing the cause to "corporate infighting and reality."
Negroponte lost interest in hardware. After outlining a dramatic (metaphorical) plan to drop tablets from helicopters, the OLPC Foundation distributed popular Motorola Xoom tablets in two villages in Ethiopia as a new experiment. In 2012, the foundation reported that children learned the alphabet in two weeks, and within five months, they "hacked Android"—referring to the children disabling software that disabled the camera. As Android phones and tablets became increasingly complex, Negroponte abandoned development of the solar-powered XO-3 tablet. Soon after, he joined the newly established Global Literacy XPrize, effectively placing OLPC in its rearview mirror.
Arboleda attempted to restart the OLPC Association and provide more institutional support for schools, but the project's prospects remained bleak. A 2012 controlled study in Peru found that laptops did not improve children's math or language skills, despite some improvements in other cognitive skills. The cheap laptops were just one factor in children's educational opportunities, and with so many different options on the market, OLPC seemed completely outdated.
In 2013, OLPC released a low-end consumer tablet in the U.S., encased in plastic over a generic Android device. That same year, it released an updated version of the XO-1, which included new components and an optional touchscreen, called the XO-4. However, there were no larger experiments or grand plans for the future. In early 2014, the OLPC Foundation in Boston quietly dissolved, and OLPC News also shut down. "Let's be honest with ourselves. The strong excitement, energy, and enthusiasm that brought us together has faded," Vota wrote in a farewell article. "OLPC is dead."
For most people in the world, OLPC is dead. However, Sameer Verma, a leader in the OLPC community involved in the Sugar Labs oversight committee, is not discouraged. Verma said, "Ten years have passed, and I wonder, should I still be doing this?" He is a professor of information systems at San Francisco State University. "I think it's still worth it. Because at its core, it's really about our ability to solve our own problems, right? The more you know, the better you are."
Like many other OLPC enthusiasts, Verma is not dogmatic about hardware. Sugar Labs is currently an independent project, and its applications have been ported to a web launcher called Sugarizer, which can run on almost any platform. In addition to laptops, some OLPC programs also distribute standalone servers containing Wikipedia articles, Khan Academy educational videos, and customized materials for local educational programs. For children and teachers without stable internet connections, this is a massive repository of information accessible through any type of laptop or tablet.
Verma said, "My mother's family comes from a small village, and growing up, we were very familiar with the way of life there." "When I see OLPC, I think— I know these things can really do a lot of good for such communities."
He is a loyal fan of the XO-1 laptop—despite very practical technical issues, many laptops are still running ten years later. He said, "I'm shocked that these things are still useful." "The batteries still work, the Wi-Fi still works, and it's surprising that OLPC is still making software images for them."
In 2015, the OLPC Association was acquired by the Zamora Terán Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Nicaraguan banking tycoon Roberto Zamora. His son, Rodrigo Zamora, is a board member of the OLPC Association. He said the new OLPC initiative focuses on delivering laptops to NGOs and updating hardware only when absolutely necessary. Currently, the company is designing a successor to the XO-4 with a larger screen and more powerful components—apparently because manufacturers complained that old parts were hard to find. "If it were up to us, we would continue to do this," Zamora said. "Basically, our goal is to keep it as similar as possible because it works very well."
Some OLPC deployments are still run through governments. For example, over the past decade, Rwanda has gradually provided laptops to young students. The project's coordinator, Eric Kimenyi, stated that 275,000 laptops have been distributed across 1,500 schools, with the scope expanding as more schools gain access to electricity.
Some projects, like OLE Nepal, collaborate with the education department but operate as nonprofits. OLE Nepal does not attempt to cover the entire country but has distributed about 5,300 laptops in areas where OLPC's hardware still has an advantage—specifically, remote rural areas without data networks or wired internet, accessible only after hours of hiking.
Other deployments are smaller and private. OLPC volunteer Andreas Gros is currently setting up a new project in Ethiopia to provide laptops and services to disadvantaged children. (Gros said these laptops are currently locked in customs.) For him, the OLPC name is more important than the hardware. "People know what OLPC stands for," he said. "They may not know the details, but at least they know what you want to do."
These projects do not follow Negroponte's original plan. The actions in Nepal and Rwanda do not provide a laptop for every child—for example, children share laptops, reducing the overall cost for schools. These laptops are often kept in classrooms, where they are easier to protect and maintain. But these initiatives still strive to achieve OLPC's larger goal, often using original XO-1 laptops.
The current relationship between the OLPC Association and these projects is fragile. Zamora said OLPC personally visits schools to provide laptops, but Verma and others in the volunteer community say they have little idea of what the organization is doing. Verma said, "The gap between volunteers and the organization has widened, and there's almost no feedback between us and them."
For years, OLPC has insisted it is not a tech company, and OLPC has indeed chosen to step back from the laptop competition, accepting its status as a niche machine. The cameras and screen resolution of OLPC's current laptops are the same as the 2008 version, and their memory and storage are smaller than cheap smartphones. OLPC estimates that it has distributed a total of 3 million XO machines over the past decade. "We're not in the business of selling laptops," Zamora said. "If we don't grow by 10%, 15%, or 20% a year, that doesn't matter to us."
So why continue making the XO? This is a question that troubles Zamora, not Negroponte. "With just a little money, we can have a significant impact on impoverished communities around the world," he said. "[Other laptops] need to be replaced in the field after weeks, dealing with dust, water, and heat." While some phones and tablets may be cheaper in the short term, a rugged OLPC may outlast them.
Karmacharya said that for children who grew up alongside smartphones and tablets, the XO design looks outdated. "If their parents happen to have a low-cost smartphone, their interest in that smartphone surpasses that of a laptop." But the device is sturdier than cheap Android tablets, and its unique design makes it harder to steal. Users can rely on the Sugar development community to maintain the software. Unlike phones or tablets, it is tailored for making things rather than consuming them. "We've been looking for other options," he said. "So far, we haven't found anything comparable."
Negroponte stated that OLPC helped lower computer prices during the netbook craze and deserves more credit. "We estimate that about 50 million laptops are in the hands of children who would not have received them, not because we made these laptops, but because we drove down the price," he said in an interview. "People may remember the green and white laptops, but the real success is lowering costs globally."
Even today, co-founder Mary Lou Jepsen believes laptops are crucial for education. "Better teacher training will only take you so far, as many teachers need to be paid to come to class, and more teachers are illiterate. Getting children access to information enables them to learn continuously, to keep asking 'why' and 'why not.'"
However, surprisingly, there is little concrete data on OLPC's long-term impact on children's education. Zamora pointed to some case studies targeting individual countries and stated that OLPC hopes to conduct more comprehensive research in the future. But the organization primarily focuses on anecdotes and distribution data as markers of success. "OLPC has always been very averse to measuring their performance compared to traditional school systems," Gros said. "There have only been very limited attempts to measure students' performance in OLPC projects because it's difficult to do."
Ames believes that OLPC's high-profile failure helps temper the hype surrounding educational technology projects. "Many people worried that OLPC would collapse and take everything with it—no funding for educational technology, no funding for tech development," Ames said. "I think, especially educational technology companies can still leverage some of the same rhetoric, and they haven't fully absorbed the lessons OLPC should teach them. But both fields need to mature to some extent and stop being so naive in their technological utopianism."
Non-OLPC student laptop projects remain controversial. Maine Governor Paul LePage labeled his state's program a "huge failure" in 2016, although it is still running, its outcomes remain murky and difficult to measure. Mitra's "Hole-in-the-Wall" project won a $1 million TED Prize in 2013, but critics say he has yet to publish any rigorous studies on its impact. Bender does not believe Mitra's minimalist computing project proves anything. "We already know children can learn to use computers. They've been doing it from day one," he said. "What the project hasn't proven is that children can learn with computers."
Ames said the real question is not whether laptop projects help students, but whether they are more effective than other programs competing for the same funding. "I think if there were unlimited funding, absolutely... learning technology is very important," she said. "That said, there are always trade-offs. There are always some projects that get canceled or defunded because of this."
Thirteen years ago, OLPC told the world that every child should have a laptop. It never stopped to prove that children needed a laptop.
Years ago, I was one of those who bought into One Laptop Per Child's early hype. I longed for a cheap computer that I would never plug in. I was enchanted by its cute design. (Those little ears!) I vaguely believed the crank was real, even after I witnessed the XO-1 without a crank. I became and still am a loyal fan of the Eee PC. But it wasn't until a few months ago that I actually used the laptop when I whimsically ordered one on eBay.
Aside from missing a battery, my XO-1 works perfectly, or at least as perfectly as my computer did ten years ago. I showed its applications to colleagues, and although it ran slowly, some people left when it opened. No matter how people talk about its sturdiness, the hinge felt fragile in my hands. It is clearly a child's machine, not a general-purpose laptop. My adult brain has been trained on other operating systems, and my fingers barely fit the rubber keys.
But I have never seen anything like it.