So rather than spend the money researching on ways to improve the health of the world’s poor population, our geniuses at MIT spent the time working on a laptop. Then again having a laptop is definitely better than having all your limbs, right?

I don’t quite understand how develop $100 laptop will improve the daily life of the target audience – impoverished kids. I think the idea is heartfelt but really shouldn’t be the priority in the current world. When you have families that don’t even have enough money to pay for food and for medications to keep them alive, I don’t see them being ecstatic when the UN shows up at their door and hands them this green piece of plastic for their kids.

As if that was not enough, since it is targetted for regions where electricity is not guaranteed you have to power the thing with a handcrank! Talk about being interactive…

The laptops will run Linux and contain a 500mhz CPU, 128MB RAM, no hard drive but four USB ports which I assume will be used to attach memory. What’s surprising is that they will come with WiFi built-in which apart from the regular function of connecting to a hotspot (infrastructure) it will support mesh networks (ad-hoc) to allow laptops to connect to each other. Now kids can setup wireless networks and communicate with each other about how hungry they are, brilliant.

I’m not against the idea behind the laptop – to help provide an education tool for underprivileged kids – but I just think there are far better things the UN and MIT could be working on ahead of this.

More pics below – click on image for the full size.

The MIT Lab site has a lot more information and there’s also a brief article on News.com

By the way, before you run to your local Walmart, these are not going to be offered to consumers but will only be distributed to foundations, schools, etc.