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Article: Green machine: will a hand-cranked laptop open new windows on the world for kids in poor countries?(PHYSICAL)
- Article from:
- Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- March 17, 2006
- Author:
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THE PRICE of a laptop computer is about to take a big plunge. A typical laptop now costs about $1,200. But engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are designing a small laptop that will sell for just $100.
Last fall, the governor of Massachusetts urged the state to buy half a million of the $100 laptops, one for each student in the state's middle and high schools. But the laptop wasn't conceived for American children. It was designed for kids in developing countries who ordinarily can't afford to own personal computers.
Nicholas Negroponte, the chairman of MIT's Media Lab, unveiled a lime-green prototype, or working model, of the ...