OLPC to ship 2,500 XO units this month

As long as the OLPC project has existed, there have been those naysayers that said that it couldn't be done, that the project would never manage to produce actual machines and get them into the hands of children in the developing world. Well, the OLPC project just keeps chugging along regardless and recently announced that 2,500 test units will ship to Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uruguay, and Thailand later this month. Quanta, the Taiwanese manufacturing company that will produce the units, says that as many as 10 million XO units could ship by the year's end--with over 1 million already on order. The units will initially cost $130 but the OLPC project hopes that the price will drop with increased production. Additionally, the project also revealed that the XO hardware can be remotely disabled in the event that it is stolen or sold--a feature that's raising a few red flags in the blogosphere.

For more on the OLPC project:
- see this Ars Technica article
- and check out the project's website