One laptop per Child

For a long time Nicholas Negroponte from MIT media labs has been pushing the idea of $100 laptop meant for the children in developing countries. Finally starting this month it has entered a mass production stage though not at a initial envisioned price but for $200. Even at that price the lap top is really radical in design and features.


Here are few innovative features that stand apart:

• Because of very low power consumption you can actually human power it, there is a small crank provided which you can use to charge the battery.
• Each laptop intrinsically acts as a wireless router, there by forming a mesh network with other laptops. Effectively you need one laptop connected to the net for the rest to take advantage.
• The best part is the Linux based open software aimed at learning and exploration than mere instruction. There are tons of social and learning tools.
• They are highly durable, drop it, bang it, kick it, they still work. They aren't any moving parts in laptop like disk drives, so this improves the durability of the laptop.

Its not just MIT backing this project but a whole range of companies like Google, Intel, AMD and major backing by UN. I guess it would be a good idea to have some kind of volunteer organization to make these available in rural India through contributions from us. The basic step would be building awareness about it among the Indian community.

Here is a excellent talk by Negroponte about the laptop:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41

Official Site
http://www.laptop.org/en/index.shtml

Venkat