$100 OLPC Laptop Advances Closer To Launch
Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder of MIT’s Media Lab and head of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) nonprofit organization, said that the laptop, originally estimated to cost $100, would probably cost closer to $135 to $140 by the time it is actually launched.
The research project at the MIT Media Lab had a plan for getting $100 laptops in the hands of millions of children in the developing and underdeveloped world. India is one of the seven countries world-wide selected for the launch of the project, scheduled for April next year.
One notable feature is a hand crank for providing power in places where electricity is undependable or unavailable.
The rugged, 2-pound laptop will be able to make its price goal, Negroponte said, not only by emphasizing essentials but also by eliminating sales and marketing costs that commercial computers have.
That is a start price,” Negroponte told an audience of Linux enthusiasts at the Red Hat conference in Nashville. “But what we have to do is, with every release, make it cheaper and cheaper — we are promising that the price will go down.”
Initial version of the “One Laptop Per Child Project” (OLPC) Laptop PC will have a 500 MHz AMD processor, 256 MB of RAM and 512 MB Flash memory instead of a regualr internal (built-in) hard disk. It will also be equipped with four USB ports and a wireless LAN interface for WLAN connectivity.
To prevent damage from dust or water, OLPC laptop will have keyboard and all four USB ports sealed. It is designed to have a very low power consuming, 7 inch by 4 inch TFT LCD screens having resolution of 1,110 by 830 pixels in B&W mode. In full color mode, the same screen will able to drop back to modest 640 by 480 pixels.
Most importantly, the OLPC laptop will run on the a free (open source) Linux operating system. According to Nicholas Negroponte, head of the project and founder of MIT’s media lab, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project will make Linux as popular on the desktop as it is on the server today.
Speaking on the final day of Red Hat’s annual user summit in Nashville, Negroponte told an audience of Linux enthusiasts and technology professionals that the OLPC project will lead to mass adoption of the operating system, if the software that powers it is efficient and usable enough.
Nicholas Negroponte said: “One of the side-effects is that it will boost worldwide consumption of Linux on the desktop so incredibly that it will be on par with where it is with servers. We need your support not to make it overweight and hard to use like all the others are.“
The key to making computing projects work in education is scale, according to the OLPC boss, Nicholas Negroponte. He claims the sheer number of machines the group is planning to build means that it can not only buy cheaper components but has the ability to change corporate strategies.
Speaking at the conference, Negroponte also explained that Red Hat is building a slimmed-down version of Linux for the machine. The goal is to reduce a 1.3-GB install to about 130 MB, bundled with e-mail, the Gecko Web browser, document creation software, and VoIP capabilities. AMD is supplying the processor. Other companies involved in the project include Google, News Corp, BrightStar, Marvell Technology, Nortel Networks, eBay, 3M, and Quanta.
Currently, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, India and Nigeria have committed to purchasing the laptops in volume, and several other countries are said to be in negotiation. OLPC intends to release a prototype to developers in the third quarter of this year and to educators in the fourth quarter. Plans are to ship the laptops by second quarter of 2007.
Microsoft and Intel have publicly criticised the project, claiming that it is wrongly focusing on the cost of the hardware.
A video of the first working OLPC prototype is available on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog. More details about MIT Media Lab and the $100 Laptop are available at OLPC Laptop Website.
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