An article on Yahoo (here) refresh the status of an internal project at Microsoft.
When OLPC was announced few years ago, Bill Gates proposed an alternative. He argued the use of a cell phone connected to a TV would be a more efficient way to introduce computing in poor communities. He was right, and the Fone+ project still going on at Microsoft to implement this vision is still right.

The Zoom H2 pictured below is a Digital sound recorder. With a high sound quality and low price it's a favorite tool among the radio journalists and podcasters for in field interviews.

There is already a zillion of review of this unit which is on the market for more than one year. You can look at O'Reilly article.

But what 's inside ?

The top side :

The highly praised One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) debuts are rough. One of the first test field is turning badly and shows the technology as adapted it is can not be the only answer.

A BBC article ( Glimpsing Nigeria's digital lifeline) gives us a real view of what is going on in the field with the first deployment of OLPC in Nigeria.

Just relocated to Mali and back online. Today in my new office a power cut. It's not a big deal as the laptop comes with its own UPS. But the ADSL modem (providing an up to 128kbit/s connexion) and the router where not backed up.

Thanks to our neighbor I was able to continue work online. But this event made the purchase of an UPS priority 1 (after getting a home, a mattress, an internet connexion at home, a fridge, a desk, a chair....) .

Luckily an UPS was available at the office. Unluckily the batteries were as dead as a polar bear in Sahara.

x86 processors despite the sub-optimal architecture are the most used platform for personal computing. The recent processor can be very power hungry with consumption reaching more than 100W. But for common usage they are not needed. Other processors compatible with the x86 exist and are more efficient.

Driven by the UMPC form factor manufacturers provide new processors, or improve old designs, to reduce the power consumption. There is a quick review of the main alternatives for a greener computing.

Two main problems when dealing with hardware in developping world are the dust and the heat. If the dust problem can be easily solved : seal the case, it has the major problem to increase the heat and make the solution worthless.

Arstechnica shows an interresting concept developed by NEC and Hitachi: a watercooling system for hard drives and CPU.

A computer that will change the world. Yes another one! It's not OLPC, nor the Classmate PC, nor the ASUSTeK EEE, it's a brand new laptop based on an alternative hardware made by Ink-Media.