Comments on: First $100 laptops ship, finally

Long-awaited One Laptop Per Child machines finally emerge

[imsunfairy2]

Looks a little like ....

doesn't anyone think they look a little (oh wait I mean ALOT) like the old Apple
iBooks????

[airwalkery2k]

Apple ibook

It does look a bit like the old iBook.

But then again, this laptop's supposed to look like a toy for kids, so the resemblance was bound to happen.

[website-designer]

Where can I buy it

I want all 10.. where can I buy them at

Henry.
Website Designer R Us

[dougfrith]

Great Pricepoint!

Besides being a good pricepoint for purchase, it's great for donations, too. With the right promotion, $100 buys a connection to the internet world for a kid/family somewhere who can't afford it.
As long as the connectivity is cheap (read "free"), these could help the 3rd world catch up to the rest of us.

[copb8]

Users better learn Linux

Looking at the "minimum" system requirements of Microsoft's XP (and I won't even mention Vista) OS and Office 2003, while this laptop does meet those requirements, everybody who has had Windows knows the OS will run like a broken dog at "minimum system requirements". I've had the misfortune of having to support computers with 125MB of RAM with XP loaded on them. Even at 256MB and a fast CPU, XP is still sluggish until you bump your RAM to 512MB. And let's not talk about the memory resources that MS Office and IE can eat up once they get launched.

At least with Linux as the OS, "minimum requirments" are 64MB (128MB preferred). And with all the free OpenSource apps available, you won't have to buy $600 of software just to use your $100 laptop.

[Ryo Hazuki]

...so one day they use Vista

Looking at the "minimum" system requirements of Microsoft's XP (and you do well not mentioning Vista because you can't even compare it to Linux, quality has a price to pay, and that's not just money), everybody who is unbiased knows the OS runs as well as any other OS, program or game with the minimal system requirements. If you've had the misfortune of having to support computers with 125MB of RAM with XP loaded on them (at least it does run, unlike OSX that needs 512 MB), that's people's fault to use XP in such machines, not Microsoft's fault for saying what are the minimal requirements for the OS to run and I'm sure that's better/easier than having to support computers with Linux loaded on them, because people wouldn't be able to run half of their favourite software. And it's very interesting that you say "even at 256MB and a fast CPU, XP is still sluggish until you bump your RAM to 512MB", because I have XP loaded on an HP Pavillion a320.pt with an AMD Duron 2500+ and 256 MB of RAM and it runs smoothly, so that should because you don't know how to correctly configure those computers you supposedly had to support (now I understand why you say that was a "misfortune"...). And why not talk about the memory resources that MS Office and IE can eat up once they get launched, don't be so affraid with the results: my IE7 "eats up" 30 MB of RAM when it's launched (and those 30 MB don't quickly grow to more than 200 MB like with Firefox) and my MS Office Word (the most used application in MS Office) "eats up" less than 15 MB when it's launched, results which I consider perfectly acceptable given nowadays most people have at least 512 MB of RAM and many already have 1 GB or more.

With Linux as the OS, the "minimum requirements" are 64 MB because for starters it doesn't have half the features XP has, specially media features. And, in case you don't know, you don't have to buy $600 of software just to use a Windows laptop, I'm using mine and I've spent exactly $0 in software until today and I can get all that free OpenSource apps in my Windows laptop too, although I admit that with all the incredible applications that are compatible with Linux you'll have a lot of fun running just half of your software (the same software that would all run on an XP).

[NormanMadrid]

Great for 3rd World. But, boost RAM and Storage!

The laptop will "modernize" 3rd World nations and U.S. inner cities. "Infinite" knowledge from the Web will become theirs. But, both RAM and storage should be quadrupled (to 512 meg and 2 Gigs), bumping up price to perhaps $250 each. That could still be affordable since all software would be free--the Linux operating system and Office-like software from the Web,and not expensive Microsoft products.

[Prince Myshkin]

waste of money

I remember the article in Tech Review about this a couple of years ago. Buying these things would use up a huge portion -something like a third - of the money poor countries spend on basic aid for their citizens. So remind me again why connnecting to youtube is more important than, say, eating.