MIT’s “$100 laptop” Rises Price With 40%

With a 500-unit field test ready to begin in September, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has announced that the much-anticipated laptop will be called Children’s Machine 1 (CM1). The Linux-based laptop is a remarkable achievement. Next to the new name some other changes were made. Manufactured by Chinese hardware company Quanta, the rugged, portable computer now features a 400mhz AMD Geode processor (the original prototypes had a 366mhz processor), 128MB of DRAM, built-in wireless support, and 512MB of flash memory for internal storage. Because of these changes, the CM1 will now cost $140 instead of the $100 price point the organisation was aiming on.

In addition to a faster processor, the CM1 sports several other new features not found in the original prototypes, including an SD card slot, microphone and speaker jacks (potentially for rumored VoIP support), and a digital camera capable of capturing video and still. Technical details regarding the 8″ LCD screen have also been released, and despite the initial skepticism of the naysayers, the folks at MIT have hit a home run. The display will feature 1200×900 resolution, which is quite remarkable for $140. In a statement on the OLPC web site, project chairman Nicholas Negroponte reveals that the CM1 display “has higher resolution than 95 percent of the laptop displays on the market today, approximately one-seventh of the power consumption, one-third of the price, sunlight readability, and room-light readability with the backlight off.”

Tremendous progress has been made this summer on the Sugar user interface system that will be shipped with the CM1. Funded by Google, AbiWord, although still experimental, has successfully been integrated into the Sugar environment. Artists and developers continue to work on the evolving Sugar interface, and the fruits of their labor can be seen in demoes, mockups, and design reviews.

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