The $100 Laptop Is Almost Here

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop,a technology that could revolutionize children's education world wide. This initiative was launched by faculty members at the MIT Media Lab.These innovative machines will be full color, full screen laptops which will use innovative modes of power.Given the fact that they are going to be used in the world's poorest countries these machines have a dual source of power.An electric adapter which can be plugged in if electricity is available and also a string powered wind up!They will be almost as capable as normal laptops except that they won't be able to store large amounts of data.

What makes these machines so cheap?They use a dual mode LCD display for one.Then these low cost computers contain flash memory instead of a hard drive and use Linux as their operating system.Although Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, offered to supply free copies of the company's operating system OS X for the machine MIT declined to accept it because it is not open source.The designers clearly want an operating system they can fiddle around with. Flash memory is a non volatile computer memory that can be electronically erased and re-programmed. Its advantage is that it can retain the stored information even when the power is cut off.Non volatile memory is usually used for the task of secondary storage, or long term persistent storage as it has limitations which render it unsuitable for use as primary storage.For primary storage we still have to rely on a volatile form of random access memory.The first computers will be powered by an AMD microprocessor.Costs are expected to fall significantly when mass production of these machines begins.

The computers now called XO laptops will cost $188 to produce initially but company officials insist that $100 remains a long term goal.Presently the aim is to sell it to governments in large volumes.At the same time there are plans to introduce a commercial version that will sell for around $200, the profits going to subsidize the educational project.

The big computer companies whose initial reaction was to laugh at the project are now watching the developments with interest.The machines are scheduled to go into production in October this year and the first computers will hit US stores in January or February 2008.

Although various governments have shown interest and are even running pilot projects to evaluate the machines and to find ways to distribute them, very few have so far made any financial commitments.Achieving the goal of distributing millions of these machines is still some distance away.