Non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), established a groundbreaking offer when it introduced an initiative to provide children in developing countries with laptops for learning.
Now, the non-profit is offering a laptop that is not only rugged and capable of withstanding extreme environments, but is also completely Green, and designed for use with renewable energy sources.
According to OLPC, their soon to be manufactured and distributed, green-colored XO laptop, is an environmentally sound offering that includes less power consumption, a longer lifetime and is recyclable.
The XO laptop offers children around the world a laptop they can use without the need for an electrical input and that instead uses solar energy to power the laptop. This reduces the need for electrical power and removes many toxins from the laptop.
Renewable energy accessories like a hand crank, a small solar panel, a foot pedal, and a lawnmower style rope pull to recharge the laptop, are included.
This dramatically reduced energy consumption saves on battery life and is part of new computer architecture for the XO laptop.
"AMD (News - Alert) has designed a unique CPU
that can turn on and off so quickly that the downtime is imperceptible to the user, but dramatically prolongs battery life," a news release noted.
With the inclusion of all of these Green features, the non-profit has received full compliance with the European Union's RoHS standards, as well as received the US PC and notebook EPEAT Gold rating, (one of only eight laptop computers to do so) and has qualified for Energy Star 4.0 Category A (the most stringent ranking).
Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer at OLPC commented, "In developing the XO laptop, OLPC had the goal of creating a child-friendly educational tool that inspires creativity and learning for children all over the world."
"But equally important for us was to produce a laptop that could be used in remote areas with unreliable or limited energy sources. The result is a laptop computer that has more than 10 times less environmental impact than the average laptop computer. It's the greenest laptop ever made, and that's not just its color."
The non-profit also noted that "if all laptops and desktops switched to the OLPC architecture, the savings in power spending alone would be enough to buy 50 million laptops outright for the world's poorest children."
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
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