This is an MIT Media lab project is likely to create a lot of new innovation and secondarily a massive price drop in the cost of laptop computers. The goal is a touchscreen laptop with a writing pad and a color screen for $100 per unit.
Updated 2005-11-4
Updated 2005-11-15 2005-12-26
For a glimpse of the computer your child will be carrying to and from school in a few years click
here,
here, and
here
And here is an
article on the laptops LCD display designer.
Various countries are
signing on to get these laptops for their students.
Here is another
early look at the $100 laptop prototype.
Apple offered to
provide MacOS X on the laptop for free, but MIT smartly turned them down. Open Source software that allows complete local development by each country, locality and/or school is a requirement of the project. Apple was obviously drooling at the opportunity to lock a whole bunch of kids into their proprietary Operating System.
The prototype is to be
introduced
to the world November 17th, 2005.
Quanta Computer will
manufacture the $100 laptop.
Lot's of pictures of the laptop are in this Taiwanese
article.