IBM Mainframe

MIT recently announced that the $100 laptops?not yet in production?will not be available for sale. The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives.

The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop?a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.

Details are a Linux OS, a hand crank for use during power downtimes, rubber cased, and no hard drive. It will utilize flash memory.

One display design being considered is a flat, flexible printed display developed at MIT's Media Lab. Negroponte said the technology can be used to produce displays that cost roughly 10 cents per square inch. "The target is $12 for a 12-inch display with near-zero power consumption," he said.

Power for the new systems will be provided through either conventional electric current, batteries or by a windup crank attached to the side of the notebooks, since many countries targeted by the plan do not have power in remote areas, Negroponte said.

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," he 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.

The idea is as audacious as it altruistic: provide a personal laptop computer to every schoolchild?particularly in the poorest parts of the world. The first step to making that happen is whittling the price down to $100. And that is the goal of a group of American techno-gurus led by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the fabled MIT Media Lab. When he unveiled the idea at the World Economic Forum in January it seemed wildly ambitious. But surprisingly, it is starting to become a reality. Mr Negroponte plans to display the first prototype in November at a UN summit. Five countries?China, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and South Africa?have said they will buy over 1m units each. Production is due to start in late 2006.

If countries (meaning their governments) are going to make a buying decision then it is going to be a sure waste. I will bet that Dell or some other manufacturer will come with a very low cost small PC/laptop or a totally new innovation while providing millions of jobs to third world people if only these same countries will allow investment and freedom to trade and contract.

Brazil and China, whose economic situation is somewhat better than ours, may be able to afford this, but not India.