One laptop per child project ships first 10 computers

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(NaturalNews) A former MIT professor started on a project years ago to place as many laptop computers into the hands of children -- mostly in developing countries -- as possible. The "One Laptop Per Child" campaign had a goal of producing a laptop computer with a cost of $100 to facilitate the project and ensure that even the poorest of countries could afford to participate in the program.

The first 10 of the laptops shipped to kids in Third World countries has now happened. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is the brainchild of Nicolas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

Just this week, the first laptops from this initiative were tested at the U.S. State Department. The machine is powered by a hand-powered crank shaft and includes many features present in more expensive laptops like a camera and microphone, in addition to wireless Internet capability.

These $10 laptop computers feature 128MB of memory and rely on 512MB of storage (without a hard drive present) and run on the freely available Linux operating system. The project has received support from huge corporations, including Google and News Corp., the global media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp is contributing $500,000 towards the project.

In addition to the backing of some impressive companies, the initiative has already signed agreements with the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand to distribute the laptops through education authorities.

Earlier this week, News Corp. CEO Murdoch stated that his company was committed to supporting the OLPC project over the next four to five years.

"What we want to do is see every child in the world anywhere have their own computer … there's an amazing amount of innovation that has gone into this, and we are very hopeful it can make a very big change in the world."

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