Negroponte details specs on planned $100 laptop
Nicholas Negroponte has been promoting this idea of the $100 PC for the developing world for a while now, and he's now showing off the proposed prototype with specs and some more details on how to implement the plan. The design calls for a laptop with 500 MHz processor, 1GB memory, four USB ports and a dual-mode display usable in full-color or in black-and-white, sunlight-readable mode. Power will be provided either via conventional electric current, batteries, or via a windup crank attached to the side of the notebook for usage in remote regions without a power grid. The systems will be WiFi-enabled and able to connect via cellular networks, as well as including built-in mesh networking allowing multiple machines to share a single internet connection. Negroponte is working with MIT and five companies (Google, AMD, News Corp., Red Hat and BrightStar) to develop an ambitious 5 to 15 million test systems within the year, to be purchased at $100 a pop by governments in Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa and distributed for free to students. They're also now considering licensing the design for third parties to commercialize, with revenue cycling back into the One Laptop Per Child project.
