UL provides guidance to OLPC

Chennai, January 30, 2008: Underwriters Laboratories (UL), one of the world's largest product safety standards developer and certification organizations, has provided extensive expertise to One Laptop per Child (OLPC), the foundation working to provide $100 laptops to the developing world, on the specific compliance requirements for the different countries targeted for distribution of the laptop.

The UL team assisted OLPC in a number of ways, including:

* Testing and certifying the XO to regional, national and international safety requirements of OLPC's priority markets

* Using a hazard-based safety engineering approach to assess the safety of the XO when used by children and in regions with extremes in temperature, humidity and other factors that impact product safety

* Providing knowledge and support on compliance and certification requirements for numerous geographies and markets around the globe

* Assessing compliance of the XO to hazardous substance requirements, including the EU's RoHS Directive

* Regularly visiting manufacturing locations globally to assess continued safety compliance of XOs coming off the production line

XO, a small, bright green laptop computer created especially as a tool to help children open the door to a world of ideas and learning, taps into children's innate capacities to learn, share and create. The One Laptop Per Child Foundation envisions giving the nearly 2 billion inadequately educated children around the world the tools to make learning possible to break the cycle of poverty. Fundamentally, the XO is more than simply a technology program: it's intended to give children an opportunity to make the most of their own potential, to be exposed to a world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive community and world.

Designed and built from the ground up through a collaboration of experts from academia and industry, the XO is a durable, low-cost, power-efficient computer that utilizes free and open-source software. Originally dubbed the "$100 laptop," the XO can be used as both a traditional laptop or for reading e-books.

According to R. A. Venkitachalam, Vice President & Managing Director, Underwriters Laboratories, Emerging Markets, UL's involvement with One Laptop Per Child and the XO was a natural fit: He said, "We truly see this project as one that was consistent with our mission of working for a safer world and eagerly embraced the opportunity to support OLPC's objective of providing a safe laptop for learning. The goals of the organization, the focus on children and learning, and the challenge of helping a product get to market that is safe for children to use in vastly different environments made this opportunity a perfect fit for UL's broad capabilities. It also gives us another way to live our corporate social responsibility goals related to community involvement and youth safety. I could not be prouder of the UL team who stepped up to be part of this effort."

About OLPC

OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte with a core of Media Lab veterans, but quickly expanded to include a wide range of exceptionally talented and dedicated people from academia, industry, the arts, business, and the open-source community. Each individual involved brings a unique skill set, and a deep personal passion, to the project. The OLPC Foundation's mission is to stimulate local grassroots initiatives designed to enhance and sustain over time the effectiveness of laptops as learning tools for children living in lesser-developed countries. The mission of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) movement is to ensure that all school-aged children in the developing world are able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning. For further information on OLPC, do visit https://bsmedia.business-standard.comwww.laptop.org.

About Underwriters Laboratories

Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a 112-year old company headquartered in the US, has done years of extensive research in its facilities to develop safety standards for everyday equipment used in homes, offices, industries, even hospitals and oil rigs.

UL India Pvt. Ltd. is an affiliate of UL Inc., with its headquarters at Bangalore. It services more than 1200 customers in India and has an employee base of over 150. UL Inc., headquartered in Northbrook, Chicago, has over 6000 employees in over 66 labs and offices across the globe. More than 20 billion products carry the UL mark today.