[OLPC] aims to make its tablet PC highly durable, all plastic, waterproof, half the thickness of an iPhone and use less than a watt of power, despite an 8-gigaherz processor. The price: an unprecedented $75.
OLPC hasn't always delivered on promises before. The original XO never hit its promised price of $100. Distributing renderings like this with a release date and price tag when the actual product is clearly in the early concept phase of development seems ambitious, to put it charitably.But overpromising might actually be part of the plan:
Negroponte is more interested in pressuring the industry to make cheaper, more education-focused PCs than he is in manufacturing any specific machine. "We don't necessarily need to build it," Negroponte told Forbes. "We just need to threaten to build it."
And as long as that threat is credible, the strategy might do a lot of good.
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