The One Laptop Per Child project, a nonprofit begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aims to improve education by giving children bright-colored, hand-cranked, wireless-enabled portable computers. Governments are to buy the laptops — beginning in 2007 with up to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina — and hand them to kids for them to own. The machines have garnered the most attention — and some skepticism — for the design elements helping to keep their price low. Among other things, the computers will employ the free Linux operating system, flash memory instead of a hard drive and a microprocessor that is slow by today’s standards but requires minimal power.
Link: Montgomery Advertiser
