OLPC computers on their way to Birmingham, Ala.

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Mar. 05, 2008

Anyone who has thought that, as nice as the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child computers are for the target market of third-world children, they'd also make a lot of sense for U.S. kids too, is in good company. The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Larry Langford, had the same thought and the result is that the city will be deploying 15,000 OLPCs to its school system.

The OLPCs will be given to all first- through eighth-graders in the city's school system. Some of the computers are expected to be deployed as early as March, with the rest to follow by the beginning of the 2008-9 school year. The first of these small Linux laptops will be used in pilot programs as teachers get up to speed on these computers.

The Birmingham City Council approved spending $3.5 million on the child-friendly computers in mid-February. The city will also need to put Wi-Fi access points into place in its school systems to fully utilize the OLPC's network capabilities. John Katopodis, an adviser to Langford, is reported to have said that a Texas company is willing to donate the Wi-Fi APs to the city's school system. This would be the first mass deployment of the OLPC in the United States.

Nicholas Negroponte's student PC, the OLPC, was the first in what has recently become a movement toward inexpensive UMPCs (Ultra-Mobile PCs). These systems, such as the commercial Asus Eee PC, are resetting the laptop industry's minimum price point to below $200.

The OLPC comes with a 7.5-inch 1,200- by 900-pixel LCD screen, a digital video camera, built-in 802.11b/g wireless connectivity and a customized version of Fedora Core Linux with the Sugar interface.

The device is based on a low-power, x86-compatible Advanced Micro Devices Geode "embedded" processor clocked at 433MHz. It comes with 128MB of DRAM (dynamic RAM), along with 512MB of nonvolatile flash memory for program and data storage. In addition, it has three USB 2.0 ports. The system boots into Linux from its BIOS.

The OLPC has been slowly getting into production since the design was finalized and put into manufacturing in November 2007.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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