BusinessWeek reviews (and offers screenshots) the Sugar OS/interface that runs on the $100 Laptop (now officially called "XO".

Sugar offers a brand new approach to computing. Ever since the first Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984, the user interfaces of personal computers have been designed based on the same visual metaphor: the desktop. Sugar tosses out all of that like so much tattered baggage. Instead, an icon representing the individual occupies the center of the screen; "zoom" out like a telephoto lens and you see the user in relation to friends, and finally to all of the people in the village who are also on the network.

As the article notes, Sugar has been criticized for its development process, which included no feedback from kids who might actually use the computer (the article says that some testing is planned in the next few weeks, but that's a little late). Designing objects without user input can be successful (look at the iPod), but it's an extraordinarily iffy process. The XO project seems far too high-profile for that sort of approach, so it will be interesting to see how well this works out.

[via the IxD Discussion List]