$100 laptops

[W1nTry]

This is interesting and I think a brilliant creation:

MIT invents $100 AMD Linux laptop

Crank-powered solitaire for the developing world

By Nick Farrell: Thursday 29 September 2005, 07:49
BOFFINS AT THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a crank powered laptop that can be made for $100.

The machines' AC adaptor doubles as a carrying strap, there is a hand crank to power them when there's no electricity.

It can fold into more positions than an Indian yoga expert and is covered in a rubber coating so it is pretty tough.

The big idea is that it will enable third world children to have access to IT and the boffins want to make 5 million to 15 million of the machines.

It is not just third world countries either. MIT hopes to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high-school students in the state.

The machines are not exactly quick. They have a 500 mHz AMD chip and flash memory instead of a hard drive. It runs on Linux too. However the laptops can connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks and be part of "mesh" networks.

The hand crank sounds a great idea, but apparently you only get 10 minutes of juice from a minute’s winding so it might not be so useful.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/ap_on_hi_te/hundred_dollar_laptop;_ylt=Anp7S6LOh4VZApt1uMn76iOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3cjE0b2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

[TinyGrasshopper]

Power to the people. But this is almost a non-event, because we have no idea whose gonna deploy it(I heard Ministry of Education in India on engadget), and we'd never figure out how to measure it's success, so yay. It's at least a successful experiment. The hand crank is the jeddest. I think OUR laptops should have frickin hand cranks.