$100 laptop gets working prototype

The One Laptop Per Child crusade for low-cost PCs for developing nations is another step closer to the assembly line.

The nonprofit organization this week is showing off an initial working prototype of its so-called $100 PC. This marks the first time the project has combined its candy-colored designs with computing hardware.

“Both the (industrial design) and the hardware had been shown separately in the past,” Walter Bender, OLPC’s president for software and content, said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. The working laptop, he wrote, is “completely self-contained, a real milestone for us.”

One of the machines on exhibit this week features a new, vividly orange exterior that complements other prototypes done up in shades of green, blue and yellow. But it’s not a final design just yet: The system carries an 800-by-480-pixel display, while the eventual production version is expected to have a 1,200-by-900 display.

Full article: c|net News.com