The Northern Territory government is going to try implementing the $100 laptops for remote regional schools.

NORTHERN Territory schools will become the first in Australia to test a revolutionary new laptop computer that costs just $US100 ($128).

…

 ”(The Department) is keen to look at an extended pilot where a whole class of students use the laptops for an extended period to establish the learning benefits and identify the associated teaching strategies and resources required,” a spokesman said. “The department is particularly interested in how the $US100 laptops can be used to extend the already substantial computer and network resources installed in remote schools, into the homes and lives of indigenous students.”

Despite what the article states, the laptops aren’t ‘hand cranked’.  That was going to be part of the original design, but was dropped because the movement could damage the machine.

There’s some pretty extensive info on the Wikipedia page for the project.  To be honest, I’m surprised the NT government is considering this.  Seeing as the laptops are specifically designed for ‘developing’ countries, is this the beginning of the government admitting that we’re allowing our remote regional communities, especially Aboriginal communities to live in 3rd world conditions? According to the article, the Queensland Education Department has described the machines as “far below the requirements” of students in developed countries. Either the NT government disagrees, or they indeed believe that regional NT is ‘developing’.

There are some more details in this SMH article on the planned rollout:

But the UN’s Srikhanta admits there are “a series of challenges” that must be overcome before a wider roll-out can take place.

The main challenge is refining the software to a point where it is intuitive and bug-free, as it is unlikely there will be anyone living among the target populations with the technical expertise to troubleshoot configuration problems when they arise.

That, said Srikhanta, is where the open-source movement and universities come in.

Being open-source, the laptops are open to development by anyone worldwide, and there is a vast community contributing new features and fixing bugs, which are then incorporated into future “builds” of the laptop.

The other main concern I can see it the Internet access.  The laptops will automatically implement a mesh network with any other laptops in range (using 802.11s to create the mesh) and so if one computer in the network has Internet access, they all do, but how do you get one.  These remote communities often have barely working phone systems if at all, how are they going to get even basic Internet connections?  And without the net it really limits the usefulness of the machines.

There’re no other details about this on the Department’s site, or the ICT in Schools site yet.