[NTLUG:Discuss] The $100 Laptop

[steve]

Fred wrote:
> It really is on topic, if you read the article...
> 
>>From the CTO of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child):
> 
> "The Chief Strategy Officer at AMD, Billy Edwards, describes our design of the
> $100 laptop as the first fundamental revisit of personal computer architecture
> since IBM launched the PC in 1981. Twenty-five years, and now, for the first
> time, we're redesigning the whole architecture — hardware, software, display —
> and we're coming up with some remarkable inventions and innovations. This is
> not a cost-reduced version of today's laptop; it's an entirely new approach to
> the idea of a laptop."
> 
> http://www.todaysengineer.org/2006/Jul/laptop.asp

I can recommend checking out the Wiki they put up - there are lot of
quite interesting ideas there.

http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php/Main_Page

* The nature of their networking solution is quite fascinating - kind of
   a peer-to-peer radio network with nodes forwarding messages on from
   people who are out of range to some kind of a wired base station.

* The display does high resolution monochrome and low resolution colour
   from the same LCD.

* The battery can be recharged from a hand-cranked gizmo that you plug
   into the laptop.

* Heavily ruggedized, waterproof, etc - in a cool-looking case that
   looks like Lego designed it!

* No disk drive at all.

* Linux from the ground up.

...all sorts of neat stuff.

I think there should be a campaign to sell these machines into the US
domestic market for $300 - the deal being that you buy one for your own
use - and two more get donated to needy kids someplace in your name.

Even at $300 it would be a great machine to have around and having a
large number of geeks owning them would drastically increase the amount
of software developed for them.