Taiwanese device maker Quanta Computer has been selected to design and build the $100 computers for MIT’s’s One Laptop per Child initiative.
The OLPC’s Board said it selected Quanta in part because the computer maker, which builds some PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard Co., promised to devote “significant engineering resources” to the project. Under the company’s current plans, it expects to deliver the laptops to market by the fourth quarter of 2006.
OLPC’s goal is to sell the $100 laptop to governments worldwide who will in turn distribute the machines to schoolchildren in impoverished regions to use in their classes and take home.
Based on RedHat Linux, the laptops feature a 500 MHz AMD processor, a SVGA 8″ display capable of displaying both full color and high-contrast black and white, 128MB of RAM and 512MB of flash memory, four USB ports, wireless broadband and will be able to operate on wind-up power. One minute of cranking gives enough power for 10 minutes of operation. The AC Cord doubles as carrying strap.
Five corporate sponsors, including AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat chipped in $2 million apiece to form a nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), to oversee the project. The goal is tens of millions produced and distributed within two years. A total of 47 million regular laptops were made last year.
By using Linux software tuned to work in individual nations, the machines will also eliminate the need for two-thirds of the software on traditional laptops, MIT Media Lab professor Nicholas Negroponte has said.
MIT’s Roofnet is used to allow Internet access to multiple machines from one connection via Wi-Fi mesh networking.
Nortel announced today that it has become a corporate member of the “One Laptop per Child” (OLPC) initiative. Nortel’s Taipei mesh network will cover 272 square kilometres where 90 percent of Taipei’s 2.65 million people live.
Mesh Standards? Why not.
Intel, Nokia, and Motorola are promoting a relatively concise mesh specification they call the Simple, Efficient, and Extensible Mesh (SEEMesh). Its main competitor is the Wi-Mesh Alliance, a Nortel-led group aiming for tighter integration between 802.11s and 802.11e, the nearly complete standard for QoS.
The principle behind Wi-Mesh is that APs should be able to reserve bandwidth or a specific route, creating virtual circuits for the meshed backbone links. Compared to SEEMesh, this improves reliability but adds protocol overhead.
Cisco Systems believes that with the .11s technology, unlicensed Wi-Fi will beat WiMax in many last-mile scenarios. “New York City wants 2-Mbit distributed Net access across the city. How can you backhaul all of that?” said Cisco’s Ecclesine. “It’s not likely we’ll have clear line of sight, but when you have mesh you don’t need line of sight.”
Currently the $100 Laptop uses MIT’s Roofnet. Perhaps Nortel will add support for the Wi-Mesh Alliance.
Craig Barrett, now a loose cannon freed from the shackles of the PR department, says world’s poorest don’t want $100 laptops. They should pay more and get a “real” computer (with Intel inside).
