Building a critical mass

CAMBRIDGE - With orders for its rugged XO laptop falling short of its initial goal, the One Laptop Per Child project announced today that it would let consumers in the United States and Canada buy the cute computer for a limited time.

In an interview last week, Nicholas Negroponte, the former MIT Media Lab director and founder of the so-called $100 laptop initiative, conceded that he had not locked in the 3 million orders that he once said were necessary to trigger mass production.

The new "Give 1, Get 1" initiative could be the antidote, he said, by helping to spread the project.

For a limited two-week span in November, people will be able to buy two laptops for $399, one for the buyer and one for a child in a developing country.

"There's a much bigger gulf between a handshake with a head of state and a real check coming out of the treasury," said Negroponte. "You could argue I could have been more realistic in the beginning, but if I had, I would never have done this."

The XO laptop currently costs about $188. Even though orders haven't kept up with expectations, the first wave of production will include 250,000 laptops, to be manufactured this fall. By January, production will ramp up and be capable of making 1 million laptops a month.

"You have a bunch of people in the supply chain; makers of various hardware that have an awful lot riding on this," said Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester Research, a market research firm based in Cambridge. "They're willing to make 250,000 on the hopes they'll catch on."

Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, and Ethiopia are among the countries that will receive the first wave of laptops. But the Give 1 Get 1 program, which will run from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26, could help spread the project. Customers who place an order during for two laptops, online or by phone, will see one arrive -on a first-come, first-served basis - in time for Christmas. The second one will go to a child in a developing country. Half the price will be tax-deductible.

Starting today, people who simply want to donate a laptop to a child in a developing country for $200 can do so online at XOgiving.org.

While the XO laptop has been a tech starlet, with WiFi antennae that look like green rabbit ears to charm critics and children, it isn't the only low-cost laptop being made.

The developing world is not often cast as the market for cutting-edge technology, but the vast majority of the world's 6.3 billion people do not use personal computers, and a low-cost laptop market could shape the future of computing.

"Nicholas Negroponte is selling an idea; it happens to have a piece of hardware associated with it, but the idea that children have a different future if they have a connected computer is very powerful and attractive," Bernoff said.

"It's a romantic idea, but in the end they are up against companies that would really prefer to keep this" from happening, he said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft cut the price of its Windows software to $3 in developing countries. The XO laptop uses a Linux-based operating system. Intel, which recently partnered with One Laptop Per Child, also has its own competing low-cost laptop, the Classmate PC.

"Keeping a Linux-based machine from gaining hundreds of millions of owners, even among children, is a hugely important objective for Microsoft," Bernoff said.

But for consumers in the United States, the interest in the laptop may not be based on its operating system, but on its easy-to-use interface; its adorable attributes, including the XO tattoo on the back that can be customized in different colors; and its altruistic mission.

The laptop is a more basic computing tool than the power-hungry high-end laptops that people are used to seeing in stores, because it is aimed at rural villages where the only power source may be its hand crank. The XO has been drop tested from 6 feet, dunked in water, and baked in an oven in its Cambridge offices for weeks to ensure that it can withstand the kind of extreme conditions facing some of the children who use it.

But it is also stylish, with a pebbled surface that will keep it from slipping off a classroom desk and a simple, child-friendly interface based on icons.

Originally, Negroponte said he did not want to sell the computer in the United States because he wanted to target the world's poorest children, who live in areas where governments may spend only $200 on educating a child in a single year.

Now, he says, Americans could help push the project forward and shape the future of the project by helping it get into the real world.

"Any time and anywhere a device is shown, the interest is incredible," said Gustavo Arenas, corporate vice president of high growth markets for chipmaker AMD of Sunnyvale, Calif., a founding member of the initiative. "We'll drive through the initial hesitation.

"I'm convinced that once the public starts understanding what this device is all about" it will take off, Arenas said.

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.