14 DAY TRIAL // A working prototype of MIT's US$100 laptop will be presented at a UN technology conference this week. The production of the device is rumored to begin in late 2006 or early 2007.
The low-cost laptop created controversy for months. In spite of this, many countries expressed their desire to purchase it. Aimed at children in the developing countries, the US$100 laptop received attention from Brazil and Thailand especially, but nevertheless, the state of Massachusetts, USA, wants to spend over US$54 million and give a laptop to every middle and high school student in the state.
Many important companies like Google, AMD and Red Hat gave a helping hand in the development of this laptop, and Microsoft is also interested in joining the project.
Apple tried to help as well but MIT was not interested. Apple wanted to give free copies of Mac OS X for use in the laptop, but the company's proposition was rejected, claiming that the OS is not open source.
It seems that the US$100 laptop will use Linux OS, Red Hat's distribution to be more specific. The designers also said that the notebook will also run any operating system that supports AMD processors. The software that comes with it will include a word processor, a Web browser, an e-mail client and software development tools.
The cheap laptop will be offered to governments and educational institutions, but also available will be a US$200 commercial version.