One Laptop Per Child' price jumps from $100 to $175

Newark (DE) - The "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) initiative planned to give notebooks computers to children at a $100 price tag, but that was apparently a little bit too cheap. The price has now been pushed up to $175, according to the Associated Press.

Still, says project director Nicholas Negroponte, mass production is expected to begin in October, and the 75% price increase will not affect the prospect of reaching three million orders for the green-and-white laptops.

The OLPC initiative aims to get laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in impoverished nations. So far, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria, and Libya have all placed orders. Peru and Russia are also in talks to buy large quantities of the inexpensive machines, reports the AP.

Quanta, the contracted manufacturer for the computers, will make about $78 profit per laptop with the new price. They will come pre-installed with a proprietary version of Windows, but can also run its own homegrown operating system.