Mary Lou Jepson, a promising LCD screen designer is the woman who designed the first notebook. MIT Media Labs’ Nicholas Negroponte envisioned the ‘One laptop per child’ project to help further education in developing countries where not enough computers are available in the poorer schools. The notebooks revolution- be part of it!
Jepson was assigned the task of designing a robust little laptop computer with the best of the basics: a full keyboard, Wi-Fi connectivity, a colour display screen and battery power that would sustain it when regular electricity supply is not available, as is the Online Electrical Service case in many developing countries. Only 50% of the children in the world have regular access to electricity. Priced at approximately $100, these little notebooks would be sold to governments in bulk and handed out freely to children in rural areas and villages.
Jepson had to be very resourceful and decided to use flash memory instead of a spinning hard drive as it uses a lot less energy and does not break easily, even if it is dropped. She made use of open source software, which is free. The AMD Geode motherboard is not too fast, but it requires very little power.
The best part is the LCD screen panel that is able to tell if an image is static and then turns off the main processor in order to save on electricity.
The laptop was built by Taiwanese computer manufacturer. The co is not well known, but they manufacture hardware for well known companies. The world’s best engineers are employed by the co.
A rival co was next in line to create a book. The rival’s books’ DVD drive can’t run resource hungry programs, as it was mainly intended as a back-up companion device. The device was intended for checking emails and surfing Best Online Electrician School social networks. Their target market of older people and children in mind, they set out to develop their book. With flash memory and a 7 inch LCD screen, the book features Linux and other open source software.
When the rival sold out their whole inventory of 350 000 books in only a couple of months. Since then, most other computer manufacturers developed notebooks to add to their range. Books retail at around $400.
The low cost companion notebooks are also known as mini notebooks, mini laptops and ultra portables.
