I was reading on this earlier on the BBC.
The unit uses Linux and will be reduced to $20 USD soon after release, and then later at $10 USD perhaps a year from now.
The design was assigned or managed by the Indian government and they went to the Indian University of Technology (or something like that) to have it designed. It seems to be a government subsidized project for the people, like say kids in school.
I wonder how it will run? Would be interesting to see. So far, with teleconferencing, it should have possibly more options then an iPad. If only iPad had put the camera's in... arrgh..
Bill