The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is expecting to deliver its first machines into the hands of children in countries including Rwanda, Libya, Egypt and Venezuela by July.
The devices, dubbed 'XO', feature a free Linux operating system with a software interface called Sugar, due for a beta pre-production release in February.
Sugar has been designed to allow interaction with other nearby XO users using inbuilt Wi-Fi, and to encourage collaborative applications and communications.
The OLPC design specifically avoids traditional business-oriented applications, such as spreadsheet, word processor, email client etc, which OLPC project leader Nicholas Negroponte deems entirely unsuitable for young people.
In a strongly worded statement, Negroponte, who previously ran MIT's Media Labs, told Associated Press: "One of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world) is children being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
"I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring and sharing, not running office automation tools."
The Sugar screen shows XO users as stick figures in a 'neighbourhood' rather than a view of files and folders on a desktop. This allows children who may be unfamiliar with computers to make the connections more easily.
The XO machines are about the size of a textbook and "lighter than a lunchbox ", according to the OLPC wiki.
Release notes have also been published showing OLPC developers grappling with 'bloat' in memory and CPU usage.
The systems have only 512MB of Flash storage and a single-core processor with 128MB of Ram, so good memory management will be a key factor in its success.
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