OLPC XO-4 Makes Surprise Appearance at CES Unveiled Show

You never know what you might find sitting on a table at CES Unveiled, a 3-hour preview event that’s held two days before the official start of the Consumer Electronics Show. Tonight at Unveiled, we stumbled onto One Laptop Per Child’s next version of its low-cost child laptop, the XO-4, sitting inconspicuously at Marvell’s booth.

The XO-4, which won’t be officially unveiled until later this week, is the first OLPC notebook with a touch screen that converts into a tablet. On the inside, the notebook features a 1.2-GHz Marvell CPU, a significant upgrade over the prior-gen’s single core processor. A new Wi-Fi radio supports 802.11n, where the previous generation only provided up to 80.11g speeds.

On the outside, the notebook looks a lot like all the previous generation OLPCs, complete with a Fisher-Price-esque green and white plastic chassis, tiny rubberized keyboard and tiny screen. We won’t have many more details about the XO-4 until OLPC officially announces it later this week.

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