Low Energy Computing?

A couple of stories I saw today reminded me of the computer stuff I was going on about a while back. Sparked off by a Ran Prieur piece (Ran's site seems to be down in 2007 anyone know what's going on?).

Andrew Brown has an anti-Vista broadside on the Guardian online site, indicating the continuing inefficiency, pointlessness and greed associated with software upgrades. The raft of subsequent comments ran the point home.

This is put in further relief by the latest news regarding the $100 “One Laptop Per Child” project for schools in the developing world which should be launched this year. The BBC Online site notes:

“The computer runs on a cut-down version of the open source Linux operating system and has been designed to work differently to a Microsoft Windows or Apple machine from a usability perspective. Instead of information being stored along the organising principle of folders and a desktop, users of the XO machine are encouraged to work on an electronic journal, a log of everything the user has done on the laptop.”

Apparently the machines will be powered by a 366-megahertz processor from Advanced Micro Devices and have built-in wireless networking. They will have no hard disk drives and instead use 512 MB of flash memory, and have two USB ports to which more storage could be attached.

This could be exactly the kind of stripped down computing we should be aiming for on a grander scale. Hopefully these small machines will be lower energy users, there has been talk of wind up models – solar power would be another obvious winner if the technological and sustainability hurdles can be leapt over. The One Laptop Per Child Wiki suggests that a retail version may become available for sale to help cross subsidise the units sent to the developing world. These apparently may have some enhanced capabilities such as built-in Ethernet and extra flash RAM.