The $100 Computer To Debut in 2007
You’ve probably already heard of the $100 computer initiative, better known as ‘One Laptop Per Child,’ aimed at world’s poorest children living in the remotest places. The possibilities are limitless – consider this… the technology that has evolved in recent years has allowed third world countries to leap frog decades of development. People in the remotest regions of Africa can now communicate effortlessly via cell phones, and the once inaccessible land lines are now being rejuvinated by voice over IP. It is almost difficult to fathom what new developments internet access will bring for our continent.
As you can imagine, the logistics involved in such a project are scary. That magic number – $100 has been a hard target for its developers. The $100 machine will run the Linux OS on a 500MHz microprocessor from AMD, will be wireless broadband-ready, and contain 128Mb of DRAM and 500Mb of flash memory for storage. The only major component missing will be a big hard disk.
This project has had many critics though, but their argument that consumers in emerging markets want full-fledged computers are baseless because the people these computers are aimed for have never used (let alone seen) a full-featured PC before.
