Sunday, April 19, 2009 | |

Production Begins XO laptop: World Top Technology

1. For a lot of these children it's their only book and we want them to have a first class reading experience.

2 .The XO currently costs $176 (£90) although the eventual aim is to sell the machines to governments for $100 (£50).

3. It has a rugged, waterproof case and is as energy efficient as possible.

4. The laptop needs an order of magnitude less power than a typical laptop.

5. It has also been designed to work outside. In particular, the green and white machines feature a sunlight-readable display.

6. The laptop has been dropped from 1.6m (5ft), with the antennas up, with no breakages. According to OLPC, the laptop keyboard has also been dunked in water for 10 minutes with no effect.

7. It also features a colored XO on the back cover. There are 400 different color combinations so that children can easily distinguish their laptop.

8. Intel chairman Craig Barret famously described it as a "$100 gadget" whilst Microsoft founder Bill Gates questioned its design, particularly the lack of hard drive and its "tiny screen".

9. Professor Negroponte's response has always been the same: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."

10. The laptop has a bespoke Linux operating system (OS) developed by leading open source software company Red Hat.


HARDWARE OVERVIEW

Processor: AMD 433 MHz

Memory: 256MB SDRAM

Storage: 1GB Flash


SCREEN OVERVIEW

9cm (7.5 inches) LCD display

Color mode: Resolution 800x600 (133dpi); power consumption 1 watt

Black and white mode: Resolution 1200x900 (200dpi); power consumption 0.2 watt; sunlight readable



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