Friday, November 18, 2005
MIT's $100 Laptop Inches Closer to Reality
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 05:00 PM
"MIT has unveiled its $100 hand-cranked laptop computer to the United Nations technology summit in Tunisia and said that it hopes to make millions of the devices to give to the poorest people in the world. The lime-green machines, which are about the size of a text book, will offer wireless connectivity via a mesh network of their own creation allowing peer-to-peer communication and operate in areas without a reliable electricity supply...the computers operate at 500 MHz, about half the processor speed of commercial laptops, and will run on Linux rather than Microsoft’s or Apple’s Operating systems as previously hoped by the two companies."
This is the first time I've seen the device in pictures, and while it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing, the target audience is largely school children, and it's likely going to be built tough enough to take a significant amount of damage. It won't be produced until the end of 2006 or early 2007, so I'm hoping nothing will go wrong with the project. I'd easily pay $100 for one of these. In fact, maybe they should sell them to general consumers for $200 and use the $100 to have one unit bought for a child in an under-privileged country.
This is the first time I've seen the device in pictures, and while it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing, the target audience is largely school children, and it's likely going to be built tough enough to take a significant amount of damage. It won't be produced until the end of 2006 or early 2007, so I'm hoping nothing will go wrong with the project. I'd easily pay $100 for one of these. In fact, maybe they should sell them to general consumers for $200 and use the $100 to have one unit bought for a child in an under-privileged country.
