Nigerians create 8.5 watt PC
No moving parts
theinquirer.net
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 13 June 2006, 06:40
THE NIGERIAN computer industry, which is unfortunately more famous for the distribution of money-making confidence tricks, has developed an 8.5 Watt PC with no moving parts.
The Solo Computer has been developed by the Nigerian Fantsuam Foundation. It uses a 1GB flash drive for storage instead of a spinning hard disk, and an energy-efficient ARM processor.
It does not have any graphics card, nor a colour screen either and runs on a 14.1-inch LCD screen. It is not cheap either. Owning one of these will set you back more than $1200.
But the big idea is that it will work entirely on a solar powered collecting device and provide technology to villages.
The fact it uses solar power means that it needs a low power consumption and 8.5 watts is a bit better than the 180 watts being eaten by the new generation of 'low power consumption' dual chips.
There is a picture and more here. µ
techtickerblog.com
Interesting proposal, but I think the $100 laptop has a better chance at success. news.bbc.co.uk
For another $100, you might be able to run the $100 laptop on solar power. The big missing part in these systems is communications. Wireless uses up modest power, but in these areas, getting hooked up to the internet is expected to be challeging. They're proposing sneakernet solutions which might be adequate for some situations, but I'm so removed, that I have trouble visioning it working. If these systems work out, and people find uses for them, it will be great, and we would likely find uses in this country as well for $100 computers (say a laptop for every student starting pre-k). |
