OLPC XO 2.0 Price Tag At $75

The organization's goal, according to OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negraponte, is to sell the unit for $75 and have them in production in 2010, according to published reports.

"We are aggressively working to lower the cost, power, and size of the XO laptop so that it is more affordable and usable by the world's poorest children," Negroponte said at the event in Boston.

The next-generation notebook computer will be about half the size of the old laptop and will not have a keyboard, but rather a software-based touch-sensitive keyboard. It will have 16-by-9 inch touch-screen displays on the top and bottom. "Being small is very important," Negraponte said. "The current one is a little too big; it's a little too heavy."

Negraponte said that the XO 2.0 would try to reach the $75 price point by leveraging anticipated advances in screen technology that will be pushed by advances in the DVD market to bring the production price below the $188 cost of the first generation notebook.

The device will first be shipped as an e-Book reader, capable of holding up to 500 titles, Negraponte said.

Negraponte and the MIT Media Lab launched the One Laptop Per Child project in 2005 in an effort to make computer technology available to third-world children.