$100 laptops for the world... based on Linux using flashdisk. Bill Gates of Microsoft has critcized the project. Posting the link to these articles is my way of helping the project in hopes that it is successful. http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,pg=0&s=26847&a=174980,00.asp http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=174976,00.asp partial excerpts from the articles listed above: The Lessons of the $100 Laptop April 4, 2006 By John G. Spooner BOSTON.The $100 laptop is coming together, its founder says, but without the famous crank. Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop Per Child, said in a keynote at LinuxWorld here that OLPC is preparing to deliver its first 5 million to 10 million machines late this year or early in 2007. The machines will come with 7-inch screens and a 500MHz processor from Advanced Micro Devices, will use flash memory in lieu of a hard drive, and will run a Linux operating system. The hand crank, which was criticized by Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, will be moved to the machine's power supply brick, however. "I have come to a conclusion that every new release of software is distinctly worse than the other. Why? It's because the fat lady can't sing. There's a natural tendency to add stuff," Negroponte said. "Suddenly it [becomes] like a very fat person.uses most of their energy to move the fat. We've gotten to the point where we have to completely rethink." The $100 laptop, on the other hand, takes away a lot of things. It does away with markups for sales and marketing, a large display and Windows XP.three of the costliest components of building and selling a machine. But it still gets the job done, Negroponte said, by offering a small but readable screen, which is designed to be viewable both indoors and out, as well as the ability to connect to the Internet and to serve as a router for other computers. The $100 laptop has a lot of parallels with the mainstream computer industry. Coincidentally, its 7-inch screen is the same size as the first wave of ultramobile PCs, driven by Microsoft and Intel. "It's the same as the Origami," Negroponte said. "I don't know exactly what Bill was talking about." Gates criticized the machine during a speech in Washington, D.C., by saying, "The last thing you want to do for a shared-use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen," Reuters reported on March 15. The $100 laptop's other components come from brand-name companies as well. They will include a 500MHz AMD processor.likely one of the company's Geode chips.along with 128MB of RAM; 512MB of flash memory, which serves as local storage; three or four Universal Serial Bus ports; and Wi-Fi mesh networking. The mesh capability, which will remain on when the computer is powered down, will foster impromptu networks and allow many machines to share one Internet connection. "We're going to be below 2 watts [of total power consumption]. That's very important because 35 percent of world doesn't have electricity," Negroponte said. "Power is such a big deal that you're going to hear every company boasting about power" in the near future. "That is the currency of tomorrow." Thus OLPC chose low-power components, including display and processor, and made the machine capable of being self-powered. The company dropped the hand crank mechanism that was present in some of its prototypes, including a bright-green machine it showed on Nov. 28, 2005, at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. The crank could stress the notebook's chassis, Negroponte said. So OLPC added it to the power supply, instead. The power supply could use a crank or a mechanism such as a foot pedal, he said. The dual-mode screen will be able to be read easily in bright sunlight and work indoors just as easily, he said, offering a 1,110-by-830-pixel resolution in black and white in outdoor mode and 640 by 480 pixels in color indoors. Meanwhile, using a relatively lightweight version of Linux.Negroponte did not specify what type, but the project is being supported by Red Hat Software.will allow for instant-on. They will roll out in seven countries.Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt and the Middle East, India, Nigeria, and Thailand.in addition to Massachusetts, Negroponte joked, where it's received an endorsement from Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The $100 laptop's initial price will actually start at $135 in 2007. The price will move downward over time, however, reaching $100 in 2008, and it will hit $50 by 2010, Negroponte said. Check out eWEEK.com's Desktops & Notebooks Center for the latest news in desktop and notebook computing. Copyright (c) 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.