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The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), founded by Nicholas Negroponte, has brought a remarkable vision to life - the $100 laptop. Slashdot.org and I have tracked this project’s progress since roughly 2002 - you should read the ambitious goals and massive collective effort that is taking place, it is quite a story.

While “It’s [OLPC] an education project, not a laptop project.” I want to focus on the laptop itself and offer one simple suggestion for Mr. Negroponte and his project. Help provide third world children with the $100 laptop by offering the laptop to first world consumers for $1,000. Below are 7 reasons why the OLPC and their laptop is well worth $1,000.

1. The project uses the domain www.laptop.org. Michael Dell himself couldn’t get that domain name and yet the OLPC uses it.
2. The software is 100% open source
3. The LCD screen is dual mode 200 DPI color and high resolution black and white for viewing in direct sunlight. The screen can also pivot and is reversible allowing pseudo-tablet computing.
4. The laptop is very portable, weighing less than 3.3 lbs/1.5 kgs and has a built-in carrying handle.
5. Panasonic Toughbook has competition. This $100 laptop includes 2mm thick hard plastic water and dust proof casing with a waterproof keyboard. No moving parts with built-in 1 GB flash memory. Expansion slots are protected by swivel Wi-Fi rabbit ears.
6. This laptop is oh so green. Depending on the display mode the laptop uses a mere 0.2 watts in black and white to a whopping 1 watt in full color. As one could imagine with power consumption so low this opens up many doors. This laptop features numerous power generating options such as foot pedal, hand crank, pull cord (similar to a lawn mower) solar (solar backpack anyone?) and more. Battery life is estimated at more than 4x a standard laptop’s battery life today.
7. It utilizes the revolutionary mesh network. Each and every laptop serves as a dedicated router thereby exponentially increasing the range of internet access. Instead of every laptop needing to be within range of the internet they will only need to be within range of each other, as long as one laptop has internet access.

Don’t get me wrong I love my mac but I would proudly use the $100 laptop. Watch out Steve Jobs!