MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte has a plan to build a $100 PC for the developing world.
Proposed is a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop using innovative power (including wind-up) and to do most everything that a conventional computer will do. These laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports. Current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB memory (no hard drive). See ,
Consider this as a business initiative for Microsoft: Microsoft to provide the OS for the $100 PC at no cost.
Before you think this is a crazy idea, consider what this would do for Microsoft.
1) It would buy them a ton of good PR, something that they could sorely use.
2) The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation could sponsor the work this
would not be so far from other initiatives that have undertaken in the third word.
3)It would allow them to introduce a whole generation of new computer
users to some flavor of Windows instead of getting them started on Linux. In this way it would hold off Linux encroachment in Africa and the rest of the third world. It would be a brilliant defensive move.
4)I am guessing that there would be an expectation that the OS be
open source.
While Microsoft would not want to to open the precious Windows source code, it would give them experience in developing tight, open code that could have beneficial effects on bloated Windows Vista code or in other areas. [MIT]