The $100 Laptop

Now, this is really a great idea! A $100 lap top, with Wi-Fi, Cell Phone, and 4 USB ports, able to run by crank or AC power, to be distributed free to every school child in the developing world. The machine was unveiled in Tunis on November 17. Somehow I missed that.

The MIT Media Laboratory expects to launch a prototype of its $100 laptop in November, according to Nicholas Negroponte, the lab's chairman and co-founder. The facility has been working with industry partners to develop a notebook computer for use by children in primary and secondary education around the world, particularly in developing countries. The laptops should start appearing in volume in late 2006.

"In emerging nations, the issue isn't connectivity," Negroponte said at the Emerging Technologies Conference on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Cambridge campus Wednesday. "That's not solved, but lots of people are working on it in Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, etc. For education, the roadblock is laptops." He and his colleagues believe that equipping all children in the world with their own notebook computers will greatly improve the level of education and help stimulate children to learn outside of school as well as in the classroom.

Kids' Notebook Specs

The lab expects to unveil a prototype of the $100 laptop at the World Summit on the Information Society on November 17, according to Negroponte. The event will be in Tunisia from November 16 through 18. He showed slides of the prototype at the MIT event.

The 500MHz laptop will run a "skinny version" of the open-source Linux operating system. It will have a two-mode screen, so it can be viewed in color and then by pushing a button or activating software switch to a black-and-white display, which can be viewed in bright sunlight at four times normal resolution, according to Negroponte. He estimates the display will cost around $35.

The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10-to-1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get ten minutes of power and use. When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be rugged and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone-enabled, and come with 1GB of memory.