So, every Libyan schoolchild will have a laptop in pretty short order. I’ve babbled about the $100 laptop project before … and now it’s real. For further details, go check out John Negroponte’s talk at TED.
For its $250 million investment, Libya will receive 1.2 million computers, one server per school, a team of technical advisers to help set up the system, satellite internet service and other infrastructure.
The computers come with a wireless connection, a built-in video camera, an eight-hour battery and a hand crank for recharging batteries. They will initially be priced below $150, and the price is expected to decline when they are manufactured in large numbers.
I wonder, do we have any school districts in the US willing to spend $150 per student on a laptop? What about if we could buy all textbooks electronically, and distribute them on the laptops?
We’re about to get leapfrogged by Libya.
In other news, I’m in Boston every day this week, building an 80 node cluster. Fun, but a lot of commuting. In better, other news, my mother and sister are coming to town on Friday! Yay!
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