We can't seem to get the $100 laptop to cost less than $250 ... but the $75 laptop is on its way

The One Laptop Per Child project hasn't hit its target price of $100, but already one of its creators is talking about a $75 device.

There's been a lot of blog noise lately about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Asus EeePC, Everex Cloudbook and other laptops that sell for anywhere for $250 to $400 ... if you can get your hands on them at all.

But this is the first I've heard of a planned $75 laptop being spun off of the OLPC project. There's a new company called Pixel Qi that exhibited at CES and is run by Mary Lou Jepson, the founding chief technology officer of OLPC.

Here's their manifesto:

What computing can be, the XO laptop was just the first step.

Pixel Qi is currently pursuing the $75 laptop, while also aiming to bring sunlight readable, low-cost and low-power screens into mainstream laptops, cellphones and digital cameras.

Spinning out from OLPC enables the development of a new machine, beyond the XO, while leveraging a larger market for new technologies, beyond just OLPC: prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of the key technology advances. Pixel Qi will give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.

More from Jepson:

I believe that looking at computers in a new, holistic, systemic way, with a clean-sheet approach to computer design - rather than incrementally increasing the horsepower of the CPU - is critical to bringing computing and Internet access to more than the 1 billion affluent who now are its beneficiaries. The key is a new generation of low-cost, low power, durable, networked computers, leveraging open-design principles.