It's started!!
Jul. 23rd, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lordshipmayhemOne Laptop per Child (OLPC) has started production!
Here is the BBC coverage of the story.
In case you haven't heard of it, this is a special project by an MIT professor named Nicholas Negroponte. He wants to get one laptop in the hands of every school-age child around the world. His theory is that the more knowledge you place at the hands of youth, including how to program computers, the better a chance they have of lifting themselves out of poverty.
OLPC tried to get a super-rugged, power-lean laptop that any child can use anywhere in the world. Because it's intended for use in third-world countries that don't have a lot of money to throw around, the price is planned to drop to about $100 per unit from its present $176 - compared to regular laptops which go for over $600 a unit. It has built-in wireless (it's intended for use where running cabling for telephones is not a realistic option) and a bunch of them together can create their own network automatically. The screen is visible in direct bright sunlight, and the refresh rate can be dropped to zero, saving power. To energize the thing there's a hand crank. The machine has all the power it needs to operate with decent speed.
To let it scream loudly, "I'm intended for kids at school!" the box is lime green with cream-coloured accents, and the antennae for wireless connection look like a pair of critter ears. For a computer, it IS cute.
Microsoft hates the project because it's using Linux - a specially modified version of Red Hat's offering - and Intel was fighting it because it was using the AMD chip, but Intel has now hopped on board.
The eventual plan is to sell boxes at double the final price to 1st world buyers (school boards and the like) and donate another one to a 3rd world country's school system.
Here is the BBC coverage of the story.
In case you haven't heard of it, this is a special project by an MIT professor named Nicholas Negroponte. He wants to get one laptop in the hands of every school-age child around the world. His theory is that the more knowledge you place at the hands of youth, including how to program computers, the better a chance they have of lifting themselves out of poverty.
OLPC tried to get a super-rugged, power-lean laptop that any child can use anywhere in the world. Because it's intended for use in third-world countries that don't have a lot of money to throw around, the price is planned to drop to about $100 per unit from its present $176 - compared to regular laptops which go for over $600 a unit. It has built-in wireless (it's intended for use where running cabling for telephones is not a realistic option) and a bunch of them together can create their own network automatically. The screen is visible in direct bright sunlight, and the refresh rate can be dropped to zero, saving power. To energize the thing there's a hand crank. The machine has all the power it needs to operate with decent speed.
To let it scream loudly, "I'm intended for kids at school!" the box is lime green with cream-coloured accents, and the antennae for wireless connection look like a pair of critter ears. For a computer, it IS cute.
Microsoft hates the project because it's using Linux - a specially modified version of Red Hat's offering - and Intel was fighting it because it was using the AMD chip, but Intel has now hopped on board.
The eventual plan is to sell boxes at double the final price to 1st world buyers (school boards and the like) and donate another one to a 3rd world country's school system.
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Date: 2007-07-23 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-24 05:28 am (UTC)