OLPC developing new 'supercharger'
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As&#160;One Laptop Per Child prepares to ship its highly anticipated XO laptops in two weeks, it is developing a &quot;supercharger,&quot; a mass battery recharger that will draw power from cows and yo-yos to help the laptops run longer.The supercharger is a box that will charge 15 batteries at a time, said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for OLPC.The supercharger complements other environmentally friendly battery charging technologies being used or under development for the XO laptop, Jepsen said. Users can hook up handcranks, cows, yo-yos, foot pedals and solar panels to the box to recharge batteries.Last week OLPC said it was designing a cow-powered generator through a dynamo with a system of belts and pulleys using cattle to generate power.A typical charge cycle for a laptop battery should be about three hours, Jepsen said. Groups of children will be able to share batteries.Currently in design, the supercharger will be ready for manufacturing next year, Jepsen said.A laptop&#39;s mileage depends on its usage, so OLPC designed an environmentally friendly laptop that could work with a rugged, low-power battery, Jepsen said. The laptop&#39;s specially designed lithium-ferro phosphate battery consumes between 2 watts to 8 watts depending on usage, Jepsen said. It lasts five years and works in environments up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius), Jepsen said.The XO batteries do not work on normal laptops, which can sap up to 40 watts of power depending on usage, Jepsen said.The XO is also the first laptop that uses only alternative energy, Jepsen said. Low-cost solar panels are great as a power option where there is plenty of sunlight, Jepsen said. Energy is especially scare in developing nations, so the laptop will hopefully pass on energy preservation lessons, which could help preserve battery life in the XO, Jepsen said.The laptop goes into manufacturing this week after three years of design experimentation and attempts to reduce manufacturing cost. It will first be offered in two weeks to consumers in the Give 1 Get 1 program, in which two laptops can be purchased for about US$400, with a user getting one laptop and the other being donated.&quot;We&#39;re exhausted, but exhilarated,&quot; Jepsen said.REFERENCES:OLPC experiments with cow-powered laptops ... seriously, Oct. 24, 2007
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ROSEMEAD, California  - Ford Motor Co. on Monday announced a partnership with utility Southern California Edison to test a fleet of rechargeable electric vehicles and said it expected to sell such plug-in hybrids within the next decade if battery technology keeps pace.
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A laptop under $100 could reach desks if a new venture formed by the former&#160;CTO of One Laptop Per Child, Mary Lou Jepsen, can deliver on its promises.A &quot;spin-out&quot; from OLPC, the company, Pixel Qi is looking to create a $75 laptop and trying to advance low-cost computers and power-efficient laptops, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics that are sunlight readable, Jepsen wrote on the company&#39;s Web site.Jepsen left OLPC two weeks ago to commercialize technologies she invented with OLPC, she said in an e-mail to the IDG News Service at the time. A patent lists Jepsen as one of the inventors of a display system optimized for low-power operation.&quot;Spinning out from OLPC enables the development of a new machine, beyond the XO [laptop], while leveraging a larger market for new technologies,&quot; Jepsen wrote.There is a big commercial market for technology spawned by OLPC, Jepsen wrote. Prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of key technology advances, she wrote.The company will continue to work with OLPC by providing products at cost, and it will sell devices at a profit to commercial organizations.A similar promise to introduce a low-cost laptop came from OLPC, when it launched the $100 XO laptop in 2005. Since then, the effort has been afflicted by production delays and rising costs, which caused the laptop&#39;s estimated price to rise to $200. It is now beset by waning orders and competition from commercial vendors that threaten to sideline the nonprofit effort.As CTO, Jepsen was responsible for hardware development for the rugged and power-saving XO laptop, designed for use by children in developing countries. Though the laptop has struggled to find buyers, it has been praised for its environmentally friendly design and innovative display, hardware and networking features.Her departure from OLPC spawned a debate, with critics charging that Jepsen was taking advantage of OLPC&#39;s nonprofit inventions for personal gains, but supporters shot back, saying it was the right time for her to leave a sinking ship.Jepsen, who is attending the&#160;International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, was not available for comment.
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OQO launches a Windows Vista-capable version of its 02 ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), sporting VIA's latest ultra-low-voltage (ULV) 1.6GHz processor chip.
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IBM  will build a  next-generation supercomputer for the U.S. Energy Department  with the potential to achieve a sustained speed of 1,000  trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, the  department said on Wednesday.
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Ian Wright, CEO and founder of Wrightspeed, discusses of the future of electric cars.
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Microsoft and the OLPC are working on a laptop that would be capable of running Windows and Linux, but it's not a dual-boot system. Sort of.
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A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.
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Intel engineers are developing a motherboard based on one of its chips for an OLPC laptop.
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(InfoWorld) - Discussions are under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside a version of theÂ One Laptop Per ChildÂ (OLPC) project's "$100 laptop" for children in developing countries, according to representatives from both parties. "Intel, like a lot of other people, is more than welcome to try to design great silicon for this project and this mission, and we've been working with them to help them do exactly that," said Walter Bender, OLPC's president, in a telephone interview. Despite its nickname, the OLPC's lime-green XO laptop actually costs $175. The first version of the machine runs on Advanced Micro Devices' 433MHz Geode LX-700, an x86-architecture chip that is slow by the standard of mainstream processors but consumes little power and costs less. OLPC is close to starting productionÂ of the XO. The group has already gone through four generations of test systems to refine the laptop's design. A production run of 300 machines was completed in August, a final preparatory step before the XO goes into mass production later this month or in early October. While OLPC has yet to decide whether or not to use Intel processors, Intel confirmed its engineers are developing a motherboard based on one of its chips for an OLPC laptop. That process required the engineers to start from scratch, since the current XO design isn't based on Intel's chips. "It requires a new design, a new product," said Leighton Phillips, the manager of Intel's World Ahead Program in Asia. The design, which Intel plans to submit for OLPC's consideration, will be based on either existing mobile chips, such as modified versions of the Celeron M called A100 and A110, or Silverthorne, an upcoming processor designed for small, mobile computers. The dual-coreÂ Silverthorne processorÂ will be made using a 45-nanometer production process and will be available early next year in different versions. Silverthorne's main advantages are lower power consumption and size. The chips are so small that Intel can fit 2,500 of them on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer, helping to keep unit production costs low enough for them to be used in handheld devices and low-cost computers. Whether Silverthorne is cheap enough to be used in laptops like the XO remains to be seen. "We're looking at ways to get there," Phillips said. If an Intel chip ends up inside an OLPC laptop, the laptop may be different from the existing XO design. That laptop was designed for use in harsh, rural environments with lots of dust and high humidity, but OLPC wants to develop laptops for use in urban areas where better infrastructure is available. "I can imagine there will be a family of laptops in terms of processor power and maybe there will be a larger form factor for older kids," Bender said. The discussions over an Intel-based laptop are part of wider talks on how Intel and OLPC can cooperate on technology and product development. Those talks started in July after Intel and OLPC signed an agreement that, among other things, gave Intel a seat on the group's board and prevents the two sides from disparaging each others' products. Besides putting an Intel processor inside a future OLPC laptop, the talks could see some of the technology developed by OLPC find its way into Intel's hands. For example, the chip maker is interested in the low-power screen technology developed by OLPC. Offering an OLPC laptop with an Intel processor doesn't mean the group will stop using AMD's chips, Bender said. "The Geode's been very easy to work with and hasn't been a limiting factor whatsoever," he said. As part of OLPC's desire to offer systems based on different processors, the group is looking to work with other vendors, in addition to Intel. One such company is Marvell Technology Group, which could see its Xscale processors, which the company acquired from Intel in 2006, also end up in future OLPC laptops, Bender said. "We want to have lots of choices, lots of people doing this, because there are lots of kids and lots of need," he said.
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A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.
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New technology could mean superfast data transfer inside the computer.
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The steam powered car that is aiming for a land speed record and an alternative fuel future.
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InfoWorld - The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has raised the price of its XO laptop to $188, according to an Associated Press report.
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In an interview with Autocar magazine, Hondaâs chief executive, Takeo Fukui, revealed that the next Honda supercar (or follow-up to the NSX) will be introduced at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show and pack a V10 gasoline engine.
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Former One Laptop Per Child CTO Mary Lou Jepsen has created a for-profit company, Pixel Qi, which will use OLPC inventions to build a $75 laptop.
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OLPC is experimenting with bovine-generated electricity for its low-cost XO laptop...seriously.