I recently replaced the Mac Mini I use to host my web development with a PowerMac G4. (Story: the Mini was mine, a personal purchase I made to support my work on Scriblio and other WordPress-related projects, but recent changes in our network and firewall policy made the machine inaccessible from off-campus without using the VPN. Having a personal machine sit at my desk at work isn’t as useful if I can’t use it conveniently and for para-work activities, so I wanted to take the Mini home.) The first challenge was replacing the x86-specific apps and daemons with PPC versions, the next one was in coming to terms with how dramatically slower the dual 1GHz G4 is from the 1.66Ghz Core Duo.

John Poole’s 2006 blog post confirmed what I was feeling: G4s are way slower than I realized at the time.

I’ve been doing a lot of talking about the coming information age and how it depends on access technology that is as cheap and easy to use as our cell phones (and applications of it that are as appealing as people find their cell phones). But I’ve been slow to mention the MIT Media Lab’s One Laptop Per Child $100 laptop plan.

The truth is that I just don’t know that much about it. That’s why I was interested to find Andy Carvin’s video interview with Mary Lou Jepsen, the CTO of the project. Jepsen answers Carvin’s questions about what’s what and how it works. I was especially intrigued by how the screen works (it’s brighter because there are no color filters).

$100 laptop, mit, media lab, mit media lab, Mary Lou Jepsen, technology, hardware, laptop, information age, digital divide, ubiquitous computing, ubicomp, portable, portable computing

I’m off visiting the good folks at Pepper today. I’ll update this post with photos as soon as they’re available, then look for a pair of posts about how the hardware/software works and what I’d like to do with it later.

Until then, here are some related posts: Ultra Portable Computing, Pepper Pad 2, and Portable Computing.

UPDATE: the picture above is blurry because of my poor photography skills. Better pictures can be found at the Pepper site. Look for more about the Pepper Pad in the next few days.

tags: computer, computing platform, hardware, internet, pepper, software, ultra portable, web, web computing