OLPC Laptop Begins Mass Production

Some five years after the concept of a so-called "$100 laptop" was proposed, the first devices began rolling off a production line in China this week.

The first official order for the device came from Uruguay, which wanted 100,000 laptops. It's likely that many of the first PCs produced will be shipped to the central South American country.

While the laptop has exceeded its set goal of costing $100 to produce, it is still fairly cheap by current standards at a total cost of $188.

A breakdown shows the majority of the costs come from two areas: the motherboard itself, which costs $73, and the LCD, Battery, AC Adapter, WiFi, and Camera, which together cost $63. Mechanical parts of the laptop come in third at $41.

From there, the other parts do not add much to the cost at all. Overhead only makes up $10 of the price, while administrative costs only amount to $1 per laptop. It's clear that backers of the project needed to lower the production costs as much as possible to leave the hardware as the only expense and produce the device cheaply.

It is the hope of OLPC founder Professor Nicholas Negroponte that eventually the device can be produced for its original $100 price target. In the end, the group says about three million PCs must be sold to make the project viable.

So far, Uruguay is the only country to formally order the device. Mongolia has a test program of 20,000 underway, but no official order has been made. OLPC has even begun to sell the devices to the public, where the purchaser agrees to buy one for a child in a developing country in order to receive one himself.