Just finished watching 60 Minutes. One of the main stories was about the One Laptop Per Child initiative. It seems that those boys from Santa Clara are trying to force their way into the mix, by any means possible. It seems to be so important the Mr. Barrett is in on the push. The man who originated the idea apparently went to AMD and Intel just is not going to have any of that. Leslie Stahl called Mr. Barrett on the strongarm tactics, but he deftly put aside her questions.

As for the design of the laptop, it looks like the prototypes were all made by Fisher-Price, but then they reminded us, these are for kids. I do think, however, that the kids using them are probably going to be beyond this styling choice. Lots of good information…like it seems that the $100 price point is still achievable [if Microsoft and Intel are kept out of it]. The designers are shooting for 10 hours per charge of the battery, with improved range of the wi-fi radio, compared to the average $3000 notebook. These are going to be bare, however, with little to no connectivity other than wireless networking. Great for third world countries, probably not much demand for them here.

Another funny thing about the notebook is the available recharging device, somewhat reminiscent of power generation on Gilligan’s Island. It is a small, hand crank dynamo.

Perhaps these could be useful here for laptop use on extended plane rides!

Still, it was interesting to see that AMD was the first choice for processor, which makes the purchase of ATI all the more sensible.

[tags]One Laptop Per Child, AMD, ATI, notebook, laptop[/tags]