Reply from the MIT group working on the $100 laptop.
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We appreciate your interest in the $100 Laptop initiative. Please know we
receive more than 100 emails per day regarding the project. We are a small
team working on making this project a reality and unfortunately we are
unable to answer each e-mail personally.
Following please find informative details on the project.
Inquiries about buying the laptop regretfully cannot be answered. Please
note that the $100 laptops--not yet in production--will not be available
for sale. The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through
large government initiatives.
All public information will be listed on our website.
Thank you.
Executive Summary
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the One Laptop per
Child (OLPC) non-profit association have launched a global program to equip
hundreds of millions of students and their teachers with ultra-low-cost,
individual, connected laptop computers to dramatically enhance the
children’s primary and secondary education. These will be fully powered,
general-purpose laptops, sized for children and adolescents, running Open
Source software, with wireless mesh-network connectivity.
The machines will be built and sold at cost to ministries of education,
with a floating price targeted at $100 and thereafter floating down.
According to the present schedule, integrated prototypes of the Gen-1
laptop will be available Q3, ’06. Manufacturing begins Q4. The first 10 to
15 million Gen-1 pilot-phase machines will ship by or before Q1, ’07, to
five or six large, geographically and culturally diverse countries. Each of
these nations will identify three or more regions within their country
emphasizing, when possible, rural and remote areas where all students in
all primary and secondary grades receive a personal and connected machine:
One Laptop per Child.
An essential feature of the pilot program will be training, logistics and
an administrative initiative based in the host country. Here, in
partnership with local educational organizations or other groups to be
determined, MIT will help create the means to implement a carefully
designed, exponential process to impart the necessary technological and
pedagogical skills to classroom teachers over a period of approximately six
months.
OLPC technology incorporates design and engineering advances developed at
MIT's Media Lab, plus innovations in manufacturing and distribution to
bring costs in line with the host countries’ budget structures. The
laptops will be made available only to schoolchildren and their teachers,
through government programs and not through retail or commercial channels.
In parallel, OLPC is in discussion with a handful of well known large and
global companies to release a commercial version circa $200 at the same
time.
Hardware
Its hardware specifications, as of October 2005, are:
500 MHz CPU (Processor) by AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) Inc.
1 GB of flash memory (no hard drive)
SVGA 8" diagonal display (dual LCD Color/Black & White mode for power
conservation and outdoor reading); estimated cost $35
128 MB 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 operating).
The cost of materials and assembly for each laptop is estimated to be
approximately $100.
Software
All of the software on the $100 Laptop will be open-source. The projected
software as of November 2005 is:
Red Hat Linux variant as operating system
A web browser
A word processor
An email program
A programming system
Participating countries
Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, United States (Massachusetts), Cambodia, Costa
Rica and Tunisia have already committed in various ways. The laptops will
be sold only to governments, to be distributed through the ministries of
education willing to adopt the policy of “one laptop per child”.
We will begin with five pilot countries and one U.S. state. Once this
occurs, we hope to extend our reach to other nations.
Prototype
Nicholas Negroponte is scheduled to demo a working prototype of the device
on November 16, 2005 at a United Nations technology conference in Tunisia.
However, the device shown will be a rough estimation, as work is still
being done on the development of the device for both performance and
pricing issues. Negroponte estimated that the screen alone required three
more months of development.
For updates please visit:
http://laptop.media.mit.edu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop
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