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The 2B1 Children's Laptop Will beGreen

Posted by Matthew Brodsky

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Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC is now being billed as the 2B1 "Children's Machine". The discount price tag is still pretty much intact, but we've been most impressed with the adherence to EU RoHS regulations, indeed the PC will contain no hazardous materials. Not only that but the 2B1's display uses only a seventh of the power of regular LCD notebook displays. Hats off to the OLPC team for making this cheap PC green.

The 2B1 Children's MachineRemember thatproject started by Nicolas Negroponte for the "$100 notebook"(Laptopical first reported on it back in early 2005)? Well, it'sstill going strong, despite a recent name change. The OLPC (One Laptop per Child) team have now named the PC the 2B1 "children'smachine"-but they're also calling it just about done. Yes, the2B1 is near ready for its prime objective-to provide discountcomputing to the world's poorest children. To pull it off, theacademics and industry experts who put their heads together, hadto completely rethink how a laptopworks.
FirstlyNegroponte's team are making sure that the Children's Machine is RoHS compliant. In a few years there won't be millions of 2B1 harddrives piled up in landfills. Why? Because the 2B1 uses flash memory and doesn'thave a hard drive! Adhering to the EU's Restriction on HazardousSubstances directive, means that the 2B1 will also limit the useof lead, cadmium, and mercury in the making of the machine.Normally, pcs can harbour a few pounds of lead alone. It's nowonder that computer equipment is responsible for two-fifths ofall lead in landfills.

Next let's look at another green issue, namely powerconsumption. The energy needs of the OLPCChildren's Machine are so little that it can be recharged byhuman power-no plug in needed. Remember, this laptop is meant foruse by children around the world, 500 million of which don't evenhave access to electricity. Hence, it comes with a crank, a pullcord, or a pedal for power generation on the fly.

Moving on to the display, the 2B1's 7.5-inch,1200×900-pixel screen has better resolution than 95 percentof all laptops. It has 2 viewing modes, one for regular viewing which uses one seventh the power of regular LCD laptop displays. The sunlit-viewing mode uses only 1/35. The 2B1's CPU uses a fraction (1/10) of the average laptop's power consumption.

For very similar reasons, the 2B1 is also an open-source-basedcomputer, which allows the kids to access free software, but alsoto reshape and recreate other software to suit their needs andcreativity. This software includes Csound, a music app.

But the 2B1 isn't some base-model empty box either. It comeswith 128MB of RAM and 512MB of built-in flash memory. Itsoperating system is Linux-basedFedora. And the processor is a AMD 400MHz Geode processor. 3Dcore 2 duo gaming? - Oh no! - but more than enough for a child in Timbuktu orTijuana to do homework on. Wait-there's more. The 2B1 comeswith a camera capable of still and video shots, three USB ports,an SD slot, and VOIP capabilities, along with a microphone andstereo speakers to go with.

And all of this comes in a package that's robust (the laptop'splastic walls are 2.0mm thick) and "kid-sized". Also it's capableof transforming into multiple shapes-standard notebook, ebookreader, or simple gaming tool. It is supposed to be able to lastfive years in kids' hands. That's the one part I'm not so sureabout.

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