Digital guru floats sub-$100 PC

via OLDaily (Stephen Downes)

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of MIT's Media Labs, says he is developing a laptop PC that will go on sale for less than $100 (£53).

He described the device as a stripped down laptop, which would run a Linux-based operating system,

"We have to get the display down to below $20, to do this we need to rear project the image rather than using an ordinary flat panel.

"The second trick is to get rid of the fat , if you can skinny it down you can gain speed and the ability to use smaller processors and slower memory."

I heard about a "A4-size palm shaped computer" couples years ago for equipping every children in China. This news also goes the same way.

He plans to be distributing them by the end of 2006 and is already in discussion with the Chinese education ministry who are expected to make a large order.

"In China they spend $17 per child per year on textbooks. That's for five or six years, so if we can distribute and sell laptops in quantities of one million or more to ministries of education that's cheaper and the marketing overheads go away."

The scale of economy is there. If it becomes successful, 2020 will definitely be very different from today.