Delivering a keynote address at the second Redhat Summit last week, Prof Nicholas Negroponte announced that the One Laptop Per Child project has achieved a significant milestone, with the prototype being able to boot into Fedora Core. This project is aimed at equipping millions of children in the developing and underdeveloped world with an affordable computer. 

India is one of the seven countries world wide selected for the launch of the project, scheduled for next year. While $100 is the target price per laptop, Prof Negroponte said that the initial price would be closer to $135 and that by the year 2010, the project would be able to achieve a price as low as $50 per unit.

The orange colored prototype features wireless peer-to-peer mesh networking, USB ports, a 500 MHZ AMD processor, 256MB RAM and 512MB flash memory in place of a hard disk. The hand crank that was a prominent feature of earlier dummies has now disappeared from the laptop itself and has been moved to the power adapter. 

According to Prof Negroponte, this has been done to achieve better energy efficiencies while cranking. The notebook display will run in both color and black and white modes.

Christopher Blizzard of Redhat, who is also working on the project, said that Fedora Core has been pared down to 235MB and will be further slimmed down to run the notebook.

Participating governments are expected to buy the laptop in bulk. 

(The author was hosted by Redhat at the summit)

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