It’s been a few months because I have heard nothing about renewing the OLPC XO laptop 1.5. but it looks like the new model is close enough to reality to have a working prototype in circulation. The folks at the OLPC Learning Club in DC was a little hands-on time with a prototype of XO 1.5 last night.

The new model replaces the 433MHz AMD Geode CPU in the original XO laptop with a 1-GHz with a variable speed VIA C7-M processor. The video shows a comparison between the new model and an overclocked XO 1 with the AMD processor running at 500MHz.

Both models are pretty quick, given the slow speed of the processors. But the VIA C7-M upgrade provides a new model in any case an advantage. As you can see in the picture above, there are no major cosmetic differences between the original XO and the new version. We have to wait for the XO 2.0, a visual refresh to get big.