$100 laptop set for launch (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

The first $100 laptops are to reach children in the developing world in the next few days, the consortium developing them has said.

The One Laptop Per Child laptops, conceived and produced by a philanthropic group of designers and engineers led by Nicholas Negroponte - co-founder of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - would begin arriving "within the next week," the project's chief technical officer, Mary Lou Jepsen, explained.

She told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme that the design of the $100 laptop was highly innovative, centring on a CPU, or processor, that saves power by knowing when to turn itself off.

"The reason the CPU is usually on on a laptop is simply to refresh the screen, so in the timing controller chip for the display we put some memory - so when nothing's changing on the screen, it goes into self-refresh mode to save power," she explained.
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"It's two watts because a kid can then use a crank or a foot pedal to recharge the batteries on their laptop - for six minutes' , they get an hour of charge. That seemed like the ideal ratio to us."


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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6189222.stm

[proud patriot]

1. cool

:)

[SoCalDem]

2. As happy as I am for them, I cannot help but feel a bit sad

for our own school kids who won't get them also :(

[leveymg]

7. Every kid in the world should be able to talk tio every other kid.

That should be a guarantee.

The cost to give one of these to every American kid living in povery - about 50 million -- $5 billion. Hey, that's one-tenth next year's supplemental budget request for the US Air Force. Let's get it there. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2632926

[leveymg]

3. Gates would be smart to give them the operating software, free

Write it off as a charitable donation.

Give them Internet access free, as well.

Double-plus cool.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Or use ubuntu, free Linux: http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Note that http://www.ubuntu.org/ is also an interesting site, but something different -- it's for political/social activism!

[leveymg]

10. Yes, it runs Linux, See the FAQ at the link, below.

This computer needs word processing and the ability to run Internet and audio/video, minimum, to be useful as a communications and learning device.

[Deja Q]

8. Windows wouldn't begin to run under the hardware specs...

The $100 tinker toy that costs $130 to make...

Why the "generosity"? Apart from making a bunch of game players, porn viewers, or cheap programmers to exploit? (Maybe I sense menace behind every shadow, but why make this new piece of garbage when old laptops running Windows would be just as effective... though one wouldn't have to spin a crank to turn it on, it'd have to be plugged into an electrical outlet...

Gates is about making money. And he already sells a crippled version of XP (lacking multimedia and can only run 3 apps at any given time) to developing countries like India. The Indians aren't there to watch movies, they are there to program. For him. For cheap. (but don't expect them to perfect WGA anytime soon... they need the piracy far more than Americans... as does China.)

[Nomad559]

11. As I recall

Microsoft did offer a free version of Windows for use on this laptop, but they wanted to use a 100% open source O/S, which Is why they never considered using Windows or Mac.

VIDEO: The Sugar user Interface
http://www.ivr-usability.com/olpc/olpc.html

:)

[acmejack]

4. Wireless mesh networking.

Very cool. http://laptop.org/

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Thanks for adding link! nt

[Deja Q]

9. Mesh topography? Ouch.

Not cost effective... wireless would only confuse everybody. Though it would be robust... and easy to hack; keep in mind wireless is far easier to break into than anything wired...