$100 Laptop Closer to Reality

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Nonconformist Geek
MIT inches ever closer to the elusive goal of producing usable, practical and extremely-low cost laptops to further education in developing nations. The intuitive design is simple, stylish and elegant. It invlolves a modular power source that doubles as a carrying handle, a rugged yet attractive architecture, a new leading-edge flatscreen technology developed by MIT, and the AC adapter doubles as a carrying strap. Due to new experimental flatscreen technology, the screen will consume very little power. Perhaps best of all, the laptop can alternately be powered with kinetic energy by means of a small hand crank. The specifications call for a 500MHz processor by AMD, and a gig of memory. FTA:

"The machines, which will run a version of the Linux operating system, will also include other applications, some developed by MIT researchers, as well as country-specific software. 'Software has gotten too fat and unreliable, so we started with Linux,' [Negroponte] said. For connectivity, the systems will be Wi-Fi- and cell phone-enabled, and will include four USB ports, along with built-in 'mesh networking,' a peer-to-peer concept that allows machines to share a single Internet connection."

Catch the rest of the article at CNet, complete with pretty pictures of the prototype. :)

-AT
 
ninja fetus said:
damn that's awesome. If released on time my brother and I will sure to have one for school.
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Sorry to dissapoint you, but they aren't in production yet, and whether or not they'll be available for individual sale (in the ~$200 range) is still up in the air. Of course, had you actually read the article before you posted your comment, you would know that. What are we Slashdot now? ;) For now, you can get a linux-powered laptop for around $400-800 new, which isn't too bad for us bloated Americans.
 
ninja fetus said:
i was talking about if they were released '06-'07
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That would be nice, but I think they'd be prevalent in places like China, Indonesia and Latin America before we get them here. They're only going to sell them in the millions, so they won't be available for single sale (at least at first). But they are thinking about selling them individually at a markup for about ~$200 a pop, with $40 or so going towards getting a laptop in some kid's hands somewhere. If that was the case, I'd buy one, especially preloaded with Linux.
 
i think that we should be concerned about the US before any other country.

I'd pay a few hundred for one if it was like planned. 500mhz, 1gb isn't too bad but it says nothing about the hard drive or any other hardware.
 
ninja fetus said:
i think that we should be concerned about the US before any other country.
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Why? Tax dollars are not paying for this, it's an outreaching effort from a specific group. That's not to say that the US won't adopt such a solution, but with big players like MS on the scene, it seems highly unlikely.

ninja fetus said:
I'd pay a few hundred for one if it was like planned. 500mhz, 1gb isn't too bad but it says nothing about the hard drive or any other hardware.
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That 1gb is the storage, flashRAM actually I believe. As for RAM, I dunno, but If you run a lightweight window manager on that sucker, it really won't need much RAM to perform really well. For instance, WindowMaker uses only 4mb of RAM, leaving all the rest for applications.
 
ninja fetus said:
...The poor or uneducated countries could use teachers instead of laptops, although that would be cool.
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They have teachers, but they don't have computers. Hence the $100 laptops initiative. :)
 
ninja fetus said:
true, but a computer's not much use without internets
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Believe it or not, pretty much everyplace in the world has internet in some fashion. My parents just got back from a trip to Honduras, and the had wireless access the whole time they were there. Just because a country is poor doesn't mean they don't have anything; it's not that uncommon in places to see a shack with a TV antenna sticking through the roof of it. I think laptops in the hands of every student would be a huge leap ahead for education in any country, especially developing ones. Not to mention that a whole year worth of textbooks would only take a few megs of storage space on a laptop, which means they're likely to have a lot more educational material than they normally would.
 
Well I reckon its a really good idea but it'd be even better if they brought it out fast and over here :D
 
Yea, a low cost light and long lasting notebook would be good. The very good lightweight and long battery life notebooks cost a lot more than normal ones.
 
This laptop = Good Idea
I'm glad to see it will have USB ports, that way if they do bring it out commercially then external HDD's can be used.
I think this could be one of the things that brings education to places where it never would have gone, i'm all for it!
 
That's a lot for the money, the screen alone would seem pretty pricey. I imagine it's pretty small but to most developing contires I imagine it would seem pretty amazing. However keep in mind that $100 american dollars is a whole lot of money in less fortunate countries. We see it as an amazing price as we're used to seeing $2000 lappies and $600 being the lower limet. For a lot of these countries they'll have nothing to compair this too and find it far too pricey for a school full of students, but I would still like it to be a reality if possible.
 
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