The US$ 100 laptop is getting closer to its goal of bridging the educational gap in poor countries as it was reported that the OLPC's (or 2B1 laptop, or Children's Machine 1, or whatever you want to call it) first 10 prototypes are up and running smoothly. This was said by Mark Foster, the One Laptop Per Child's project onsite supervisor. The team assembled the first 10 units by hand to perform related tests that would ensure that the production process is solid.

Another OLPC executive, Walter Bender, also said that "Quanta, the Chinese computer maker that won the international bidding for the project earlier this year, will assemble 900 OLPC machines that will be used for destructive testing and distribution to our development partners. Our vision is a step closer to becoming a reality."

Laptop's reportedly working, so how about the software aspect of the project? Team member Jim Gettys and Chris Blizard said that "the ice is relatively slushy due to the fluid nature of early development and critical bug fixes will be applied up until the last moment. We expect to have the Sugar framework, web browser, chat, a simple text editor derived from Abiword, a simple version of the music application (mini-Tamtam), a memory game, and eToys in the base system. Numerous other applications and demos will be in a repository where they can be readily downloaded."

Hopefully the 10 units could grow to 10,000, and that 10,000 could multiply to a million units. That may be wishful thinking for now, but hey, it could be the real deal in no time. Let's hope for the best.