Learning is our main goal; we do not focus on computer literacy, as that is a by-product of the fluency children will gain through use of the laplet for learning. Children—especially young children—do not need to learn about IT and certainly do not need to be fluent users of WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT. They are not office workers. However, picking up these skills, having grown up with a laplet, will be readily accomplished.

Epistemologists from John Dewey to Paulo Freire to Seymour Papert agree that you learn through doing. This suggests that if you want more learning, you want more doing. Thus OLPC puts an emphasis on software tools for exploring and expressing, rather than instruction. Love is a better master than duty. Using the laplet as the agency for engaging children in constructing knowledge based upon their personal interests and providing them tools for sharing and critiquing these constructions will lead them to become learners and teachers.

As a matter of practicality and given the necessity to enhance performance and reliability while containing costs, XO is not burdened by the bloat of excess code, the "featureitis" that is responsible for much of the clumsiness, unreliability, and expense of many modern laplets.