The computer is not much larger than a USB keychain dongle, and includes an HDMI port to connect a display, and a USB 2.0 port to connect peripherals. The device runs on Linux, thus keeping any software licensing costs low (if not non-existent).

The Raspberry Pi is no gaming machine — that’s for sure — but it should be great for its purpose of teaching computer science: a 700MHz ARM11 processor powers the unit with 128MB of RAM, and a SD/MMC slot would handle the memory needed to power the device. It also seems modular — the picture of the device above shows a 12-megapixel camera module attached.

Braben and Co. hope that the device’s low price attracts governments, parents, and children alike to scoop the device up and get it into as many hands as possible quickly. It also seemingly puts pressure on OLPC — the $100 laptop folks — although the Raspberry Pi has no included monitor or input device.

The device is not yet ready for prime time: first it must produce a better prototype, then prove that it can be manufactured for the $25 target price. After that, mass production needs to begin. All that is going to take about a year according to the team.

I hope they make this available to the general public, because the geek in me really wants to get his hands on this. For $25, can you really go wrong?

An upgrade to the current model is due at a $200 price point next month. This will be followed by a touchscreen version of the XO laptop in 2011 at a price point of around $150, and finally the tablet which would make its way to market the following year.The tablet would be made of flexible plastic and would be a drastic departure from the current design of the laptop, officials say.

OLPC has struggled recently as the company was forced to lay off 50 percent of its workforce earlier this year. This likely had a lot to do with the worsening economy, which hit the tech sector fairly hard. But the initiative is trudging on, determined to complete its mission of providing technology to children in the developing world. Admirable, but of course a bit costly.

I for one am super curious as to how these folks are going to pull this off. I know you can’t tell much from pictures, but that looks like an awfully advanced device. How are you going to be able to build something like that for $100? I understand that advancements in technology these days are moving faster and faster, but we don’t even have products like this available to the general public right now, much less underprivileged kids around the world.

Hopefully this isn’t going to end up as vaporware, but right now it sure looks like it.

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In a blog posting, founder Nicholas Negroponte explained that as a non profit, OLPC is bearing the brunt of the worldwide economic downturn. It has reduced its team down to 32 people, and the remaining personnel have reduced compensation. With luck the person that produced the foundation’s creepy John Lennon ad wasn’t spared the pink slip.

Negroponte reaffirmed the organization’s commitment to its mission of providing children in developing countries with laptops. To that end it will embark on several new technology initiatives. Those include:

1. Development of Generation 2.0 of the XO laptop
2. A no-cost connectivity program
3. A million digital books
4. Passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community.
5. Creating a $0 laptop to be distributed in the least developed countries.

The foundation will also change its deployment strategy, targeting Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. Further, it is restructuring its Latin America operations into a separate support unit.

500,000 children have already received laptops, according to OLPC. Computer literacy plays a role in economic development, and the foundation’s work should continue. Let’s all hope it rides out the downturn.

As everyone who’s writing about this is pointing out, deceased celebs (such as Fred Astaire) have been doing ads for a long time, and Apple’s “Think Different” campaign commandeered not only John Lennon’s image (along with Yoko Ono, who presumably granted permission) but that of the Mahatma himself. And there’s nothing sacrosanct about the Beatles in an age in which their music is featured in diaper ads.

But the Lennon-XO ad is unusual in putting words into the late endorser’s mouth–words that don’t make much sense, since “Lennon” seems to say that the purpose of his music was to give children access to “a universe of knowledge.” The obvious, crude fakery of the ad lends a cheesy air to the proceedings, too. The more you like John Lennon, the less you may like it.

Look, OLPC is an exceptionally noble nonprofit undertaking (I’ve paid for laptop donations in 2007 and 2008 and plan to do so again) and it’s entirely possible that Lennon would have been an enthusiastic supporter if he were still with us. If Yoko Ono thinks he’d have appeared in spots for it, I believe her. But that kind of doesn’t matter, since the ad that OLPC made is creepy, not inspiring. (One in which Ono said Lennon would have loved OLPC would have been entirely different. Geez, Ringo extolling the virtues of XO would be a vast improvement.)

The ad gives me the willies, so I would almost rather not embed on this site…but here you go:

And what the heck, let’s do a T-Poll on it:

It’s a fabulous idea, and the best news about this year’s program is that Amazon.com is handling the fulfillment of the “Get One” laptops (at cost). Last year, the fulfillment firm chosen by OLPC proved incapable of getting laptops out to donors in an organized and timely fashion: When I made a donation I didn’t mind the fact that I had to wait for weeks after the estimated arrival date had come and gone so much as that the fulfillment house lost my mailing address. Repeatedly.

I always feel guilty even bringing all this up, since the “Give One” laptop is the one that really matters–if XO had told me that it simply didn’t have a laptop for me, period, I would have been okay with it. But if anyone knows how to ship out vast numbers of products reliably and promptly it’s Amazon, and it seems a safe bet that this year’s program will go infinitely smoother than last year’s bumpy start. In fact, Amazon says that they’ve got ‘em in stock for immediate shipment–and when Amazon says that, I believe it.

In the time since the XO debuted, it’s proven enormously influential: It’s an obvious influence for Asus’s eee PC, the small, simple, budget-priced notebook that the rest of the laptop industry has been cheerfully ripping off for months. (Netbooks tend to be a lot more prosaic than the XO, but the inspiration is there.) OLPC is now working on a second-generation XO that includes two screens, a la Nintendo’s DS–it’ll be fascinating to see if that out-there design gets just as much sincere flattery from PC companies as the XO has.

Should you Give One, Get One in order to get an XO to use as a netbook for serious adult-type productivity? I wouldn’t: The child-sized, rubbery keyboard wasn’t meant for grown-up touch typists. And while OLPC has introduced an XO that runs Windows XP, the G1G1 laptops are the original ones, running Linux and the decidedly kid-oriented “Sugar” user interface. But the XO is a hacker’s delight. And if you do take one out in public, you’ll still attract plenty of attention.

This year’s G1G1 campaign, happily, seems to be off to a good start: The current XO is the top-selling laptop and top-selling electronic kids’ item at Amazon at the moment. I’ll be giving one and getting one myself, but since I already have an XO I’ll give away the one I get, too–to a member of the Technologizer community. Stay tuned for details…

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.

When some of us American journalists dropped by, we saw four kids deeply engaged in using Asus’s eee PCs–and ignoring a One Laptop Per Child XO laptop that was sitting off to one side. That may or may not be a commentary on the relative appeal of the two low-cost notebooks, but it makes for an interesting photo: