Kudos to Negroponte

We noticed a very nice development this weekend: the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation of Cambridge is enjoying a surge of new orders.

We want to offer kudos to the oft-maligned visionary Nicholas Negroponte, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who had the idea of a $100 laptop. When the concept could not meet that cost number, he was roundly ridiculed. The critics hit even harder when the developing countries that promised to purchase backed out of initial promises to purchase. When Negroponte ended up having to set up his buy one give one deal that saw a $400 purchase give the buyer a laptop while sending one to a child in a developing country those critics could not stop offering up “I told you so.”

Give One Get One Program Extended
Last week we noted the extension of the One Laptop per Child purchase program until the end of the year due to a great deal of late interest. Now we see some incredible numbers coming through that show Negroponte’s vision was indeed one that developing countries would buy into.

This weekend it was announced the Peru had inked a deal to purchase 290,000 of the $188 machines. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim also purchased 50,000 of the machines for distribution in his country.

Negroponte hopes that this will lead more countries to buy millions of the machines and then hand them out free to children to promote educational opportunities.

This comes on top of the fact that the Give One Get One program is seeing about $2 million in orders every day. Over 190,000 laptops have been purchased with more than half being donated to children in developing countries. Many customers reportedly donate both when they make their purchase.

Lawsuit Pending
On the negative side we see where OLPC has been hit by a patent-infringement lawsuit in Nigeria. Filed by Lagos Analysis Corp. of Natick, the suit claims copyright-infringement against OLPC insisting that the OLPC design stole the multilingual keyboard created by Lagos.

To improve on the complicated process for converting between languages and the various accents used in those languages, a keyboard with four shift keys instead of the basic two is used. The two additional shift keys produce the proper symbol in conjunction with a specific letter.

Negroponte insists that the design predates the current patent owned by Lagos.