Today I met with Richard Bernstein to catch up. Rich is a partner at Greenberg Traurig, the large, Miami-based law firm, where he is a senior member of the corporate securities and transactions practice. As soon as we got our coffee, Rich began talking about a new client. Rich is serving as counsel in Central and South America for OLPC. (Rich and I share a deep interest in technology and international business and he has a great sense of humor.)
OLPC (One Laptop per Child) is Nicholas Negroponte's project to provide a $100 computer to every child in the third world. Negroponte is a Professor at MIT, the co-founder of the MIT Media Laboratory and wrote some fascinating articles in the 1990s for Wired about the future of the Internet, media and technology.
Rich detailed the technical specs for the laptop (open source software, AMD chip, 1G of flash memory, camera, etc.) and pointed out four distinctive features:
- a patented screen that works in direct sunlight (because many third world schools are outside)
- a 10 hour battery that can be recharged up to 1000 times (compared to 300-500 for a normal laptop battery) and many other "green" features
- wireless communication between nearby OLPC laptops without the need for routers
- mesh network technology which enables all the laptops in an area (think classroom) to have Internet access if only one computer has access
He also showed me his working model of the OLPC. A picture is at the end of the post (courtesy of www.techfresh.net). Much has been written about the OLPC, but what impressed me was the range of functionality in such a small form factor. If I loaded Open Office, a Linux-based Microsoft Office competitor, on the OLPC I would have the complete functionality of my current Dell Machine at approximately one fifth the weight (and the battery would last about four times longer.)
I think that smaller and smaller, light laptops with long life batteries is the future direction of PCs. I think that the OLPC could now be the standard of comparison for "ultralight" laptops. Maybe this is why Dell and Intel have been so anti-OLPC. 300 million third world children having their first computer experience with an OLPC (running an AMD chip) might also be a concern :).
Now if the cell phone served as a projector for the laptop, I might not need a screen. If the PC was embedded in the cell phone, then I might only need a keyboard and .......maybe that's why Apple launched the iPhone!
