Fw: The $100 Laptop is Coming: ?IEEE-USA Today?s Engineer Online? Article

[Paul Rinaldo]

Gang,

Does a $100 laptop have any resonance?
Paul

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: c.mcmanes at ieee.org
>Sent: Jul 21, 2006 5:44 PM
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>Subject: The $100 Laptop is Coming: ?IEEE-USA Today?s Engineer Online? Article
>
>NEWS from IEEE-USA
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>The $100 Laptop is Coming: ?IEEE-USA Today?s Engineer Online? Article
>
>WASHINGTON (21 July 2006) -- Some manufacturers Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen
>approached about producing and selling a laptop computer for $100 laughed
>at her. Despite this chiding and disbelief, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
>chief technology officer has persevered, and the $100 laptop is on track to
>be shipped next spring.
>
>Jepsen describes the OLPC program in ?Working on the $100 Laptop? in the
>July issue of "IEEE-USA Today?s Engineer Online."
>
>OLPC is a non-profit association dedicated to researching and developing a
>low-cost laptop to serve as an educational tool for children in the
>developing world. The cheapest laptops on the market today typically sell
>for about $499, a price completely out of reach for most of the world?s
>children and their parents. The $100 laptop has the potential to transform
>education in the world?s poorest countries.
>
>Jepsen writes that Billy Edwards, AMD?s chief strategy officer ?describes
>our design of the $100 laptop as the first fundamental revisit of personal
>computer architecture since IBM launched the PC in 1981. Twenty-five years,
>and now, for the first time, we?re redesigning the whole architecture ?
>hardware, software, display ? and we?re coming up with some remarkable
>inventions and innovations.?
>
>The $100 laptop, which will have online capability, will also have features
>that most typical laptops do not. These include instant on, three to four
>times the range of WiFi antennae, a hand crank to recharge the battery,
>one-tenth the power consumption, and a higher-resolution display.
>
>?This is not a cost-reduced version of today?s laptop,? Jepsen writes.
>?It's an entirely new approach to the idea of a laptop.?
>
>To read the entire article, go to www.todaysengineer.org. To subscribe to
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