$100 Dollar Laptops

Unlike any laptop ever built

The laptop is not a cost-reduced version of today's laptop; we have fundamentally reconsidered personal computer architecture-hardware, software, and display. Unlike any laptop ever built, the laptop:

* Creates its own mesh network out of the box. Each machine is a full-time wireless router. Children-as well as their teachers and families-in the remotest regions of the globe will be connected both to one another and to the Internet.

* Features a 7.5-inch, 1200×900-pixel, TFT screen and self-refreshing display with higher resolution (200 DPI) than 95% of the laptops on the market today. Two display modes are available: a transmissive, full-color mode; and a reflective, high-resolution mode that is sunlight readable. Both of these modes consume very little power: the transmissive mode consumes one watt-about one seventh of the average LCD power consumption in a laptop; and the reflective mode consumes a miserly 0.2 watts.

* Can selectively suspend operation of its CPU, which makes possible further remarkable power savings. The laptop nominally consumes less than two watts-less than one tenth of what a standard laptop consumes-so little that laptop can be recharged by human power. This is a critical advance for the half-billion children who have no access to electricity.

To enhance performance and reliability while containing costs, The laptop is not burdened by the bloat of excess code, the "feature-itis" that is responsible for much of the clumsiness, unreliability, and expense of many modern laptops. We intend for laptop to start up in an instant-faster than any commercial laptop now available-and move briskly through its operations.

The laptop is an open-source machine: free software gives children the opportunity to fully own the machine in every sense. While we don't expect every child to become a programmer, we don't want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children-and their teachers-will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.

The generation-one machine's core electronics begin with the 433Mhz AMD Geode processor. There are 256MB of dynamic RAM and 1GB of SLC NAND flash memory on board. The basic integrated operating system is a "skinny" Fedora distribution of Linux. The user interface is specially designed to support collaborative learning and teaching: every activity comes with a support network of teachers and children, so learning need not be an isolated, lonely endeavor.