Laptops for Third World kids

"A rugged $100 laptop specifically for primary and secondary school students in the Third World." It's the brainchild of MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte, the San Jose Mercury News reports, and it's becoming a reality, with the help of Mary Lou Jepson, who was poised to become one of those serial Silicon Valley start-up founders. But before starting her second company, she decided to take her idea for a low-cost laptop screen to the non-profit association Negroponte formed, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Jepsen told the Mercury News she wanted to do something more meaningful. OLPC's idea is that "inexpensive laptops could connect children to the Internet and give them access to textbooks that would be too expensive to distribute in print." Also the world's education ministries are more likely to listen to and adopt the technology of a nonprofit organization than a commercial entity, the thinking goes.