What is the $100 Laptop, really?
The proposed $100 machine will be an innovative hardware design, based on Linux, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have three USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. This is a special low power, extended range wifi with its own CPU that allows data transmission to continue while the main CPU is sleeping, e.g., during transport in a backpack. The laptops will use a wide range of DC power inputs (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. We expect that some units will be adapted to special uses by adding USB peripherals.