| Effort to give 15 million $100 Linux laptops to school kids gains momentum |
Sep. 29, 2005
 Is the idea of producing an ultra-cheap Linux-based laptop computer for schoolkids -- or anybody, for that matter -- just a pie-in-the-sky figment of someone's imagination? It may be, but nonetheless, somebody's trying to do it.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology actually has a plan to deliver $100 laptop computers to children in developing nations and impoverished American students, and it is moving forward, according to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the school's Media Lab.
Speaking Thursday at MIT's ongoing Emerging Technologies Conference, Negroponte confirmed that five countries -- Brazil, China, Egypt, South Africa, and Thailand -- are already putting plans in place to distribute as many as 15 million of the devices. The effort has taken the form of a nonprofit group launched by the Media Lab that is known as One Laptop per Child, which Negroponte first detailed at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January.
Read the rest of Matt Hines' story in PC Magazine here.
This is by no means the first low-cost personal computer project. The MIT project joins the India's Simputer and AMD's Personal Internet Computer (PIC), and VIA will soon announce its own entry.
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