$100 LaptopThe MIT-designed $100 laptops are finally out. The machine was launched by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan while attending a three-day World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia. The laptops boast of wireless network access and a hand-crank to provide electricity are expected to start shipping early next year to help extend technology to school-age children worldwide.



The machines are to sell for $100, which is surprisingly less than their cost itself.



“These robust, versatile machines will enable children to become more active in their own learning,” said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The main aim of the summit was to find ways as to how to extend communications technologies to the world’s poorest nations — through projects like the $100 laptop.



MIT Media Lab Chairman Nicholas Negroponte expects to sell around a million machines to Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria. The laptop will run on free Linux operating system, which is cheaper than Microsoft’s Windows.



Five corporate sponsors, including Google and Advanced Micro Devices, have also invested a $2 million apiece to form a nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child, to oversee the project.



Some developing countries have already shown a keen interest in ordering a million or more units. The American students will also benefit from this project. The Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has proposed a $54 million program to equip each of his state’s 500,000 middle-school and high-school students with these laptops, which the students can keep with themselves.



These $100 laptops would provide a technological boost for the developing and the under-developed nations of the world. The step is being considered as a big step towards a vision of learning being transformed as radically as medicine, communications and entertainment.







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