The $100 laptop is coming ever closer to launch, reports Arstechnica. Today, Taiwanese computer manufacturer Quanta Computer said that it will begin manufacturing the laptops for Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative.
The technical specs on these new laptops include a 500MHz processor, 500MB of Flash memory, wireless broadband, and the capability to play and compose music, all on a 7.5-inch screen. There will be no hard drive included in the devices, which will also have built-in WiFi capability to connect to the Internet via MIT’s Roofnet mesh network.
The string-based generator is designed to be quiet and easy to use, not to mention not physically demanding, as the early hand crank design would have been. To reach the project’s goal of one minute of power generation for every ten minutes of laptop use, the generator would need to produce 20 watts (the laptop uses less than two watts).
“With a hand-crank system, if you’re gung-ho about it, you can get about five watts out of it. But you get tired after about a minute or so,” says Geo Homsy, a partner and designer at Squid Labs. With the new system, generating 20 watts is comfortable, and it’s possible to generate 10 watts for “as long as you want,” the developers say.
Negroponte positioned it as an education project rather than a technology project last fall. Backers include; AMD, News Corp., Red Hat, Bright Star, and Google as well as the United Nations. Several developing countries have expressed interest in purchasing and distributing the machines.
Microsoft recently introduced its own program to reach people in emerging markets. Microsoft’s “FlexGo” technology uses a prepaid phone card, for a pay-as-you-go approach.
Intel hopes to launch a laptop for less than $400 by the first quarter of next year.
Currently, about 2 billion people currently have cellphones around the world. “Today is about how we get to 5 billion units in the industry,” Ron Garriques, the head of Motorola’s handset division told investors. Their new Motofone is designed for emerging markets and will work on GSM networks which 80 percent of the world’s cellphone market is based on. Motorola has already received an order from one carrier for 500,000 Motofones.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Free Laptop Battle, Dissing the $100 Laptop, $100 Laptop Contract to Quanta, $100 Laptop Gets RedHat, $100 Laptop Shown, Mesh Standards?, Mesh Roundup, Meshed Roofnets and PersonalTelco Building Free Cloud in Portland.
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