November 16, 2006 11:24 AM PST
First $100 laptops ship, finally
(Credit: OLPC Wiki)It seems as if the $100 laptop (give or take a few bucks) has been discussed forever, but the first ones appear to have finally been built and shipped. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project says it has received its first 10 from Quanta, its Taiwanese manufacturing partner.
The project is still in a beta stage, as the first 10 "B1" laptops were hand-assembled before a larger 900-unit run, according to the OLPC Wiki. Pictures were also available on the project's news Web site.
The B1 laptops run Linux and come with AMD's Geode processor, 128MB of memory and 500MB of flash memory for storage. It's not clear how many color options will be available for the devices, but maybe green will be the new black (or gray).
Tom Krazit, a staff writer for CNET News, focuses on all things Apple. He has covered traditional PC companies such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, chip companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and mobile computers ranging from Research In Motion's to Palm's. E-mail Tom.
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iBooks????
But then again, this laptop's supposed to look like a toy for kids, so the resemblance was bound to happen.
Henry.
Website Designer R Us
As long as the connectivity is cheap (read "free"), these could help the 3rd world catch up to the rest of us.
At least with Linux as the OS, "minimum requirments" are 64MB (128MB preferred). And with all the free OpenSource apps available, you won't have to buy $600 of software just to use your $100 laptop.
With Linux as the OS, the "minimum requirements" are 64 MB because for starters it doesn't have half the features XP has, specially media features. And, in case you don't know, you don't have to buy $600 of software just to use a Windows laptop, I'm using mine and I've spent exactly $0 in software until today and I can get all that free OpenSource apps in my Windows laptop too, although I admit that with all the incredible applications that are compatible with Linux you'll have a lot of fun running just half of your software (the same software that would all run on an XP).