TechJunction

Even with the price of what used to be known as the “$100 laptop” still hovering closer to the $200 mark, the organization behind the XO laptop design is at work on a next-generation device with an even lower target price: $75. To get there, it’s counting on advances in software technologies and in hardware development, including work on processors and displays.

Hence the typing experience depicted here in the One Laptop per Child organization’s XO-2 mockup, where the standard laptop keyboard has been replaced by a QWERTY touch screen. That reconfiguration would also allow for customizable keyboards, the OLPC said Wednesday, with younger children using a simplified keyboard and older ones able to use designs specific to various applications and multiple languages.

The OLPC’s stated goal has always been the education of school children, especially in developing nations, so the planned XO-2 laptop also draws on that most classic of classroom technologies, the book. Here, the computer has been switched from horizontal, laptop mode to a vertical e-book format. The group says that version 2 also will be about the size of a book, or about half as big as the current design.

Another goal for XO-2: even lower power consumption. Where standard laptops tend to draw between 20 to 40 watts of electricity, the first-generation XO uses just 2 to 4 watts, and the organization aims to get the XO-2 to just 1 watt.

Last week, the OLPC announced that it would offer a Windows-compatible version of the XO, long a Linux-only machine, for sale in several countries starting in June.

The OLPC also envisions the XO-2 being laid flat, with the two screens functioning as one. (We’re not sure exactly where the group stands on any potential revival of the primitive computer game of Pong.)

CNET’s Dan Ackerman offers these thoughts on Wednesday’s XO-2 pitch: “The most interesting part is clearly the dual touch-screens in place of a traditional keyboard and monitor. The publicity photos look a bit too sci-fi, and the final product (much like the original XO’s early design mockups), will probably be somewhat more pedestrian.”

The XO-2 will be in a green and white case, as is the current XO, seen here in a presentation by OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte in April 2006.

The organization aims to have the the XO-2 ready for delivery in 2010. It also plans to release an XO-1.5 in spring 2009; the design will be the same as that of today’s XO, but the laptop will have fewer physical parts and will cost less (the current price stands at $188), the OLPC says.

For a look at the XO in action at a school in Africa, see “Photos: Nigerian students power up their laptops.” via cnet