Now that Walter Bender clarified OLPC's software development schedule, Ship.1 (Build 623; Firmware Q2D03) will happen in time to "Sugarize" OLPC Uruguay by Christmas, there is still the question around XO-1 production delays that could effect the size of One Laptop Per Child's initial delivery size and timing to Uruguay.

If you believe OLPC press releases then it could be 100,000 laptops which are rolling off assembly lines in October. But if you look to Uruguay's El Pais newspaper you get a whole other impression:

On November 12 the company Qantas in Shanghai, China, will begin to produce computers for the Plan Ceibal. The first wave is 5,000 units.

The Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay (LATU) hopes that the first laptops come to Montevideo before finishing November. Manufacturers are not so sure this is possible, and point to the first half of December, but the issue will be subject to final negotiation of the contract between the LATU and the company won the tender, Brightstar Uruguay.

Pablo Flores clarifies that OLPC Uruguay hopes to receive about 10,000 or 20,000 XO laptops in 2007, enough for a full rollout to Florida's 8,000 children and mighty good start towards full 1:1 computer penetration in Uruguay.

But maybe I am splitting hairs. Does it really matter how many computers OLPC ships to Uruguay in 2007 when May Lou Jepsen questions the whole concept of computer manufacturing?

"What is mass production, anyway?" asks Jepsen. "Is it when you put together the motherboards, or is it when the operators on the line screw together the plastic parts on a conveyor belt? You can say that that’s when it really becomes a laptop - but we designed it so that five-year-old kids in Nigeria can screw it together. In a way, the work is already largely done."

I say One Laptop Per Child really has a laptop when children in Florida province are enjoying a full functional One Laptop Per Christmas tree.

But that's not when the work is largely done if One Laptop Per Child really is an education project, not a laptop project. The work of educating the next generation, empowered by technology, will only just begin when children start to "learn learning," and will continue long after XO laptop production ends.