24 June 2009

A sweet deal for old computers

An article in MIT’s Technology Review reports on a surprising new use for One Laptop Per Child’s user interface, Sugar. From the article:

The open-source education software developed for the “$100 laptop” can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to run aging PCs and Macs with a new interface and custom educational software.

“What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost,” says Walter Bender [...] “It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.”

Nicholas Negroponte, who has given many TEDTalks, says “Putting Sugar on a stick is absolutely the right thing to do.”

Discuss this Blog Post

Tommys Mommy
Jun 24 2009
This is a wonderful idea. My son is autistic and the computer is very important in his social life.
tom jonson
Jun 24 2009
Good Idea.These days, to improve the technology, almost everything is very dependent on computers.Computer is probably the most expensive and important thing in our life.
John Hall
Jun 25 2009
Wow! This is really cool. Computers really makes it easier to live life today. This is a nice idea you got here. Thanks for the share!

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josh renalds
Jul 8 2009
These days, to improve the technology, almost everything is very dependent on computers.
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Robin Martell
Jul 8 2009
I am looking for the right place to make this comment. I haven’t found a way to message the webmaster. I love TED. I love the talks. I hate the new user interface. This site is supposed to be TED Talks. If the centerpiece of the page is supposed to be the talks, why are you truncating the names of the talks? There used to be an option to look at a text based list instead of this picture thing. That was an idea worth keeping!