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Posted on 11/26/2005 8:56:44 PM PST by N3WBI3
The $100 laptop designed by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association, previewed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference in Tunisia last week, will be using a Redhat Linux variant as its operating system.
The lime-green laptop, which uses a 500Mhz AMD processor and has 1GB Flash RAM instead of a hard drive, will only use open source software, despite an offer from Apple for it to use Apple's OS-X operating system for free.
The laptop is still in development, and it is estimated that the screen alone (currently an eight-inch dual colour/black and white SVGA) needs three months more development. The software, as it currently stands, includes Redhat Linux, a web browser, a word processor, and email application and a programming system (the details of which are still to be announced).
According to MIT, the target price of $100 (or R653.66 at current conversion rates) should come down after the initial launch. Integrated prototypes of the Gen-1 laptop are expected in the third quarter of 2006, and manufacturing should start in the fourth quarter, with 10 to 15 million laptops expected to be shipped by the first quarter of 2007.
Recipients of the laptops will most likely include Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, the State of Massachusetts in the US, Cambodia, Costa Rica and hosts of the last WSIS forum, Tunisia. South Africa was initially included in the list as a recipient of 1 million laptops, but Fantus Mobu from Sita's procurement department told INET Bridge that SA had no commitment to purchase the laptops. This is despite the fact that one of the MIT professors leading the project – professor of education and media technology, emeritus for MIT's Media Laboratory, Seymour Papert – was born and educated in South Africa, and was an active member in the anti-apartheid movement.
Hardware specs - 500Mhz AMD processor - 1GB flash memory (no hard drive); - SVGA 8" diagonal display (dual LCD Color/Black & White mode for power conservation and outdoor reading); - 128MB of DRAM; - AC Cord that doubles as carrying strap as the power source and a hand-crank (one minute of cranking gives enough power for 10 minutes of operation).
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For a laptop to cost only $100, I'd buy several. I couldn't care less if it used Vanilla or even Windows Millenium, I'd still get it. Well, okay, maybe not with Millenium, but pretty much anything else.
Desktop Linux is a cruel thing to inflict on a child. But it least it will have better security than Windows.
kewl
"Recipients of the laptops will most likely include Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, the State of Massachusetts in the US, Cambodia, Costa Rica and hosts of the last WSIS forum, Tunisia. "
--I would like to know what makes Messachusettes so special to get these laptops, (Aside from the obvious point that their a bunch of liberal commies-), i know alot of parents that could use them for their kids to learn in the (tm)Peoples republik of california. All kids should be able to have access to them.
I thought that also... My guess would be because this is a program at MIT..
Ah. Banana Republics, in other words.
I cut my teeth on CP/M then on the interfaces of those dinky 80s home computers. Desktop Linux would be a Sunday walk in the park :)
For basic use, RedHat's unified desktop is no more difficult than Windows. I think it less so in many respects.
1GB Flash Ram and they still come in under $100? The last time I looked, 1GB was in the $80 range by itself.
I wonder too.
I never thought of them as a third world country. Politically, maybe. But, not financially.
If the doodads have networking of any variety, I'd love to get my hands on a few. They'd make ideal things to use on the road for email and whatnot. At least you wouldn't consider hari-kari if you accidentally left one behind at a hotel.
At least you wouldn't consider hari-kari if you accidentally left one behind at a hotel.
They do have wireless networking built in and (I have read) can easily be setup to network with eachother to from an intranet if not intrenet is available..
MIT is right up the road from me. Howsabout I go case the joint then you and I can pull off a little laptop 'panty raid' one night?
We can give them away to Freepers at Condi's Inaugural Ball in 2009. =;^)
We had a car broken into in Kansas City. An X-Cube was stolen. Miraculously, the KC police recovered it along with a lot of other things stolen from vehicles that night as the Nobel Lauriate that stole the stuff had it in the trunk of a stolen car he was tooling around in.
Turns out Linux is a pretty good thing to have on a computer. The guy never got in and we got it back with some rap DVD (CD-ROM drive) in it which of course he couldn't play (even if it were a DVD drive).
As for competitors, I keep nothing sensitive with me on the road. I chat with my wife via IRC, check personal email and things of that nature.
You know that some of the Pols or people at MIT have kids who will wind up with one.
Or am I being too cynical? Naaahhh.
Right 128 mb ram is too low for red hat these days. And not just RH. Suse, Fedora, Mandriva, etc. Even the small-bore Vector SOHO finds it tight. They must be talking a custom distro build based off fedora, since fedora is a branch from RH.
Though Whax isn't a bad choice either, and from what I read, it's just as customizable.
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