$100 Notebook boots up

Krishna Kumar

NASHVILLE (Tennessee): Founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child

non-profit association Nicholas Negroponte announced that the One Laptop Per

Child project has achieved a significant milestone, with the prototype being

able to boot into Fedora Core as of last week.

He was delivering a keynote address at the second Red

Hat Summit here today.

The One Laptop Per Child project is aimed at equipping millions of children

in the developing and underdeveloped world with an affordable computer. India is

one of the seven countries world wide selected for the launch of the project,

scheduled for next year.

While $100 is the target price per laptop, Prof. Negroponte said that the

initial price would be closer to $135 and that by the year 2010, the project

would be able to achieve a price as low as $50 per unit.

The Orange colored prototype features wireless peer to peer mesh networking,

USB ports, a 500 MHZ AMD processor

256 MB of RAM and 512 MB flash memory in place of a hard disk. The hand crank

that was a prominent feature of earlier dummies has now disappeared from the

laptop itself and has been moved to the power adapter.

Prof. Negroponte said this has been done to achieve better energy

efficiencies while cranking. The notebook display will run in both color and

black and white modes.

Christopher Blizzard of Red Hat, who is also working on the project, said

that Fedora Core has been pared down to 235 MB and will be further slimmed down

to run the notebook.

Participating governments are expected to buy the laptop in bulk.

(Red Hat hosted author at the summit)

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