The £99 laptop

Posted at: 4:24am 18th February 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Elonex takes on the Asus EEE PC with this tiny Linux machine

We've had all sorts of failed promises about cheap laptops for children over the last few months, so it's difficult to treat another one with any kind of respect. The OLPC (one laptop per child) project ended up being over-priced, and Intel later pulled out of the project. Meanwhile, Asus' EEE PC cost almost twice as much as it should have done when it was finally released. However, Elonex reckons that it's got the balance right with its new £99 ultra-portable ONE laptop.

Elonex's marketing manager, Sam Goult, took the opportunity to have a little dig at the OLPC project, saying that 'The ONE removes the cost barrier that has prevented the one-laptop-per-person, large-scale uptake of computers in the education system that has for so long been just a pipe-dream.'

Like the EEE PC, the ONE features a distribution of Linux, rather than Windows, which Elonex claims has 'massively reduced the cost and has been a major factor in making the ONE available sub £100.' No details of the specs have been announced yet and, when we probed for some extra info, Goult said that all would be kept under wraps until the laptop's big unveiling at The Education Show at the end of this month.

However, we do know that the ONE will feature integrated WiFi, and that it will also come with a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics package, email client and Web browser. Elonex says that it's also made a request to the government to make the laptop exempt from VAT, so that it really does cost £99, and that the incredibly low cost will also be achieved via corporate sponsors.