MIT Media Lab Developing $100 Laptop

Posted on October 3, 2005

MIT is working on a project to develop a $100 laptop To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. Here are three ways the MIT says it can keep costs down on the laptop.

First, by dramatically lowering the cost of the display. The first-generation machine may use a novel, dual-mode LCD display commonly found in inexpensive DVD players, but that can also be used in black and white, in bright sunlight, and at four times the normal resolution-all at a cost of approximately $35.
Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways.
Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like textbooks.

One of the prototype laptop designs (picture on right) shows a laptop with actual hand crank that can be used to generate power when electricity is unavailable. It is bizarre to see a hand crank on a laptop, but they are trying to make them as cheaply as possible.