Word: laptopping
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...Idea of Professor Negroponte - co-founder in 1985 of MIT's influential Media Lab - is the development and distribution of a high-quality, low-cost laptop to potentially hundreds of millions of children throughout the developing world...
...first task was to design a machine that would allow kids to connect wirelessly to the Internet without an outside source of electricity, and that would be rugged enough to function in often harsh conditions. Prototypes of the laptop (dubbed XO) - with built-in video and audio, a hand-crank and low wattage requirements - are getting high marks from technology reviewers. Some 8,000 units are up and running in pilot villages from Cambodia to Uruguay. But perhaps an even more difficult task was to generate enough mass interest in the project to allow the computer to be produced...
...Though Negroponte and his project are not quite there yet, the 63-year-old professor is as busy as ever piling up the snow. Such was the case Monday in Rome, where he was utilizing the most important new tool in his stump speech: the lime green laptop with a toy-like design that Negroponte carries with him everywhere. Throughout the day, he spoke to three packed auditoriums, and met with officials at the U.N.'s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Telecom Italia. In between, he taped an interview at Vatican...
...Still, the skeptics remain, noting for example that the price tag of what was once billed as a $100 laptop is now closer to $200. Moreover, the original strategy of getting six of the largest developing countries - Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya - to commit to buying one million units stalled in August. The governments in China and India have also been resistant, convinced that they can do something similar on their own. Negroponte's response has been to open up the program to individuals and companies, launching in mid-November in the United States a "Give...
...Taiwan-based laptop manufacturer Quanta will begin by turning out 44,000 units a week at a recently expanded factory in Changshu, northwest of Shanghai. Negroponte said some 300,000 orders have been booked so far. The goal is to be turning out a million laptops a month by mid-2008. That avalanche, the critics will say, better start rolling soon. But Negroponte doesn't seem to mind the doubters. Four years ago, he ran into Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell computer makers at the World Economic Forum and told him - again - about his concept for making inexpensive...