Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab's founder, announced at the Technology Review's Emerging Technology conference that the notebook specifically designed for emergent markets is almost ready. This product will have a price tag of $100.

The basic configuration for such a system will consist of a color display, Wi-Fi connection, a 500 MHz processor and 1 GB of flash memory. The project is backed by AMD, Brightstar, News Corporation and Red Hat Linux.

Negroponte said that countries like Brazil, Thailand and Egypt have already showed interest in this notebook, each of them expressing their desire to acquire 1 million units. The researchers are currently looking for methods to cut production costs even more, one of the solutions being the employment of a cheaper display, similar to the one used in portable DVD players.

Another feature the MIT team wants to include in this notebook is a handcrank that will ensure the power supplying in the areas with no access to the power network.

A series of prototypes have already been finalized, but will take some time before they enter mass production.

Negroponte says that this project is one of the most significant things in his life, because the possibilities are endless; any person on the emergent markets would want to purchase such a computer.


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