Thursday, March 22, 2007

One Laptop Per Child

I haven't been keeping up with One Laptop Per Child. It looks like they have the Red Hat "Sugar" OS worked out. Bill Gates has stopped attacking it and started writing software for it, over protests from Greens. It lost the crank last year and will accept power from an external power source of whatever type, human or not. I have to concede that the crank is probably better off as a separate charger device than built-in. I wouldn't mind seeing this in Japan. I can't help but compare it to a cell phone. Many young Japanese are content with a cell phone and see no use for a computer. Computers haven't declined much in price, as manufacturers concentrate on making new models with never-before-seen power specifications, rather than undercut themselves by building machines which are low-powered and cheap. People can just buy a used computer for that. I think there is a market for these in the developed world, too.
OLPC: http://laptop.org/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24100_laptop

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