OLPC The Second

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project has been hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons recently, but that hasn't stopped OLPC from unveiling the successor to its XO notebook.

When we say 'unveil', what was actually revealed at yesterday's MIT Media Lab event was a concept design — the finished product isn't due to appear until 2010. The XO-2's standout features are its small size (about half that of the original XO) and dual touch-screens: it can function as a portrait-format e-book, as a tablet with a single continuous screen, or in clamshell mode with a virtual keyboard (see above).

The display technology will come from Pixel Qi, which was founded earlier this year by former OLPC chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen.

According to Negroponte, the target price for the XO-2 is $75 and the target power consumption is 1 watt. The original XO currently clocks in at $188 and 6W.