Laptops for $100!!

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, has taken up this project. Although no contracts with governments have been signed, current plans call for producing five to ten million units beginning in late 2006 or early 2007, with tens of millions more a year later. They are aiming to place the laptop in the hands of 100 to 150 million students. Under present plans, the first production version of the laptop will be powered by an AMD microprocessor and use an open-source Linux-based operating system supplied by Red Hat. Open-source software is not patent protected and can be copied for free. To get the price down, an eight-inch diagonal screen -- smaller than standard notebook computers -- will run in two modes, with a high-resolution monochrome mode for word processing and a lower-resolution color mode for Internet surfing. It will be powered by both a power adapter, if electricity is available, or through a wind-up mechanism. The device will have wireless capabilities and can network with other units even without Internet access. Here is the url for the news: http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,120845,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4292854.stm They are planning to have a open source OS and Red Hat is on their mind. Why not Solaris? If anybody who has contacts in MIT can take up this, it will be wonderful news for Sun and Solaris.

-Narendra