Will the price fall below $100 by 2017?
The project originally aimed for a price of 100 United States dollars. But there are a few variables that affect the price of the unit. As a starting price it is now slightly above $100 but they're setting a target to make it $100 by 2008.
With the fall of computing price over the years, chances are the price of the unit will go down pretty soon. This consideration is also perhaps the reluctance of the use of "$100 laptop" project as the name.
In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: "It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140. That is a start price, but what we have to do is with every release make it cheaper and cheaper— we are promising that the price will go down."[1]
Surely the price of the laptop will drop significantly in 2017--with configuration remains constant.
[1] Donoghue, Andrew. "$100 laptop 'will boost desktop Linux'", CNET News.com, 2006-06-02. Retrieved on 2006-08-19.