When the program launched, the typical retail price for a laptop was considerably in excess of $1,000 (US), so achieving this objective required bringing a low-cost machine to production.

[4] The project was originally funded by member organizations such as AMD, eBay, Google, Marvell Technology Group, News Corporation, and Nortel.

The OLPC project is critically reviewed in a 2019 MIT Press book titled The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child.

[5] OLPC, Inc, a descendent of the original organization, continues to operate, but the design and creation of laptops is no longer part of its mission.

[6] The OLPC program has its roots in the pedagogy of Seymour Papert, an approach known as constructionism, which espoused providing computers for children at early ages to enable full digital literacy.

[7] Despite the reported skepticism of Bill Gates and others, Negroponte left Davos with committed interest from AMD, News Corp, and with strong indications of support from many other firms.

And I'm doing this for my own daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free, not proprietary, where control of knowledge is in the hands of people everywhere, with basic works they can adopt, modify, and share freely without asking permission from anyone.

UNDP released a statement saying they would work with OLPC to deliver "technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries".

[14][15] In 2008, Negroponte showed some doubt about the exclusive use of open-source software for the project,[16] and made suggestions supporting a move towards adding Windows XP, which Microsoft was in the process of porting over to the XO hardware.

Development of the Sugar operating environment was moved entirely into the community, the Latin America support organization was spun out and staff reductions, including Jim Gettys, affected approximately 50% of the paid employees.

Funding from Marvell, finalized in May 2010, revitalized the foundation and enabled the 1Q 2012 completion of the ARM-based XO-1.75 laptops and initial prototypes of the XO-3 tablets.

[citation needed] At the World Summit on the Information Society held by the United Nations in Tunisia from November 16–18, 2005, several African representatives, most notably Marthe Dansokho (a missionary of United Methodist Church), voiced critic towards the motives of the OLPC project and claimed that the project presented solutions for misplaced priorities, stating that African women would not have enough time to research new crops to grow.

Mohammed Diop specifically criticized the project as an attempt to exploit the governments of poor nations by making them pay for hundreds of millions of machines and the need of further investments into internet infrastructure.

[29] Others have similarly criticized laptop deployments in very low income countries, regarding them as cost-ineffective when compared to far simpler measures such as deworming and other expenses on basic child health.

[37] John Wood, founder of Room to Read (a non-profit which builds schools and libraries), emphasizes affordability and scalability over high-tech solutions.

Those of a low socio-economic level tend to not be able to effectively use the laptop for educational purposes on their own, but with scaffolding and mentoring from teachers, the machine can become more useful.

The rugged, low-power computers use flash memory instead of a hard drive, run a Fedora-based operating system and use the SugarLabs Sugar user interface.

[64] Stallman fully agreed with de Raadt's request to open up the documentation,[61][failed verification] since Stallman is known to hold an even stronger and more idealistic position in regards to the proprietary components, and requires that even the firmware that runs outside of the main CPU must be provided in its source code form, something de Raadt does not require.

[62] OLPC's dedication to "Free and open source" was questioned with their May 15, 2008, announcement that large-scale purchasers would be offered the choice to add an extra cost, special version of the proprietary Windows XP OS developed by Microsoft alongside the regular, free and open Linux-based operating system with the SugarLabs "Sugar OS" GUI.

[73] Several defects in OLPC XO-1 hardware have emerged in the field, and laptop repair is often neglected by students or their families (who are responsible for maintenance) due to the relatively high cost of some components (such as displays).

[30] The OLPC XO-1 hardware lacks connectivity to external monitors or projectors, and teachers are not provided with software for remote assessment.

[30] In 2005 and prior to the final design of the XO-1 hardware, OLPC received criticism because of concerns over the environmental and health impacts of hazardous materials found in most computers.

[74] The OLPC asserted that it aimed to use as many environmentally friendly materials as it could; that the laptop and all OLPC-supplied accessories would be fully compliant with the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS); and that the laptop would use an order of magnitude less power than the typical consumer netbooks available as of 2007 thus minimizing the environmental burden of power generation.

A June 2008 New Scientist article critiqued Bitfrost's P_THEFT security option, which allows each laptop to be configured to transmit an individualized, non-repudiable digital signature to a central server at most once each day to remain functioning.

[84] Delays were blamed on order fulfillment and shipment issues both within OLPC and with the outside contractors hired to manage those aspects of the G1G1 program.

[93] The country reportedly became the first in the world where every primary school child received a free laptop on October 13, 2009 as part of the Plan Ceibal (Education Connect).

[95] Still, more recent studies give an opposite view of the project's results, regarding it a success, like in the case of the 2020 publication by Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.

[96] On January 26, 2012, prime minister Ara Harutyunyan and entrepreneur Eduardo Eurnekian signed a memorandum of understanding launching an OLPC program in Artsakh.

The New York-based nonprofit Armenian General Benevolent Union is helping to undertake the responsibility by providing on-the-ground support.

[103][104] India's Ministry of Human Resource Development, in June 2006, rejected the initiative, saying "it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents".