OLPC; One Laptop Per Child

All throughout the course we’ve been talking about how great computers have made our life easier and how revolutionary the Internet has been over the last few years. The advantages computers have provided us with and their low prices combined with broadband connectivity have allowed small businesses and larger organization to do things faster and better.
A computer might be more affordable to us today, but for other countries, a computer is for most people a luxury they can only dream of having. The founder of MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte saw a need that needed to be filled and kick started the project of OLPC, more commonly know as One Laptop Per Child. It is the biggest non profit technology based project in a decade that seeks to put 100 million laptops in the hands of developing world schoolchildren in the upcoming years. The price tag for this project is estimated at $10 billions US. Among the countries that would benefit from this initiative, we can find Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda and Uruguay.
The technical challenge was to build something rugged enough to withstand harsh conditions, real efficient, but by the same token cheap. The One Laptop team with its former MIT engineers had to reinvent the portable computer as we know it. The current cost of the laptop is around $150.00, the goal is to reduce that price down to $100.00.
Those little machines are a marvel of engineering if you ask me. The laptop comes with WI-FI antenna for wireless access to the Internet and each laptop acts as a wireless router; so the more laptop in an area, the wider the wireless coverage from one access point. There is no hard drive in the system, instead it uses 512Meg of Flash Memory, and LED (Light Emitting Diode) will light up the panel and a processor that draws less than 2W of power. The system consumes next to nothing in power and can operate for more than 6 hours while surfing the web with the backlight LED on. For the areas where they don’t have power, a small cranking device called Yo-Yo a Go-Go was developed. The device was engineered so that very little strength would be necessary to crank the device, taking in consideration that a lot of the kids may not have the strength and endurance to use the device for extended period of time. A microprocessor regulates the voltage even has the speed of the devices slows down, continuously providing a charge to the battery. This is just simply amazing!!!
The list goes on and on with the features and engineering that was put into this device. I would invite you to take 5 minutes and read a little more about what I think is one of the coolest things that have been done for the kids in development countries. The engineering behind this system is nothing short of extraordinary. Take a look at this small video, its well worth it.