The One Laptop Per Child program was started at MIT and features truly innovative and inexpensive designs, meant to make technology accessible to everyone, and put laptops in the hands of children and communities in developing countries, and rural areas all over the world.  The program, backed by Red Hat and Google, would make use of bleeding edge innovations in the technology world, including wireless broadband, DVD capability, and flash memory instead of a hard drive.  And, it’s electricity-optional, since it charges with a manual crank, not unlike some emergency flashlights and similar items.

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

This project should be one to watch - it’s great to see technology being put to a use that can contribute to the greater good.

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