Originally published December 18 2005
Researchers unveil $100 hand-cranked laptop
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The $100, hand-cranked laptops are the size of a textbook, and are able to set up their own wireless networks. MIT and other groups have been striving to make a low-cost laptop so they can be given to poor children for free.
Researchers unveiled a prototype of a $100 hand-cranked laptop computer on Wednesday and said they hoped to place them in the hands of millions of schoolchildren around the globe.
About the size of a textbook, the lime-green machines will be able to set up their own wireless networks and operate in areas without a reliable electricity supply, MIT researchers said at a United Nations technology summit.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other groups have been pushing hard to create a low-cost laptop, part of a U.N. effort's aim that "everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate" in the benefits of information technology.
The goal is to provide laptops free of charge to children in poor countries who cannot afford computers, said MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas Negroponte.
Its designers concede that the prototype they unveiled was missing some crucial features, such as a cheap display screen and a working hand crank.
But expectations are high, with distribution expected late next year or early in 2007.
"These robust, versatile machines will enable children to become more active in their own learning," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at a news conference where the laptop was unveiled.
The leaders of the "$100 Laptop Initiative" said they wanted a machine that would be a substitute --- at one stroke --- for computers, textbooks, libraries, maps and movies that may be missing from poor children's lives.
"We call that the 'curl up in a bed' mode," and it's crucial to a child using the computer outside school, said Kenneth Jewell, an "envisioner" at Design Continuum, the firm in West Newton, Mass., that was hired to design the laptop's exterior.
Nearly a half-dozen developing countries, including the education ministries in Brazil and Thailand, have expressed interest in ordering 1 million or more units, says Alexandra Kahn, spokeswoman for the MIT Media Lab.
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