But the MIT professor and Media Lab founder said in a speech at the Red Hat Summit that he expects economies of scale to help bring the cost of the ruggedized 2-pound Linux laptops to $100 by 2008, when the OLPC hopes to ship 100 million of the computers, up from 7 million to 10 million in 2007.

By 2010, Negroponte predicts that the price will drop to $50 per computer by 2010.

"The World Bank asks us, 'Have you done studies?' Well, we haven't. But there is no time for pilots. Those days are over. This is a slam-dunk, as long as we execute, execute, execute," he said.

Companies participating in the OLPC include Red Hat Inc., Google Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., News Corp., BrightStar Corp., Marvell Technology Group Ltd., Nortel Networks Corp., eBay Inc., 3M Co. and Quanta Computer Inc., a large Taiwanese notebook manufacturer that is expected to build the computers.

Those companies' efforts, along with the elimination of a sales and marketing team, which Negroponte estimates makes up half of the cost of a typical laptop computer, are helping to cut costs.