One Laptop Per Child
Its a very uplifting story, as it describes how many industry executives thought it couldn’t be done, and even laughed at her idea to her face. And, lo and behold, they succeeded!
The details of the product are at laptop.org (does anyone else think its odd that it hadn’t been registered already?). Its not the next hardcore gaming machine, but it features some remarkably smart design innovations which make it cheap, energy-efficient, and very functional. It runs with an AMD processor (cheap, light, etc) and Red Hat Linux (total OS size: 100 Mb) and the key thing, it seems to me, which makes it so cheap and energy efficient is the new LCD display design that theyr’e using. It’s a 7.5″ screen with a 200 dpi black and white resolution, one can turn it into color mode with a backlight with 800 x 600 resolution, and consumes much less power, while retaining readability in direct light even without the backlight. They’re designed to connect and work well with adhoc networks (peer-to-peer as opposed to with some central hub, which is unlikely to exist in many places), automatic ebook functionality, are designed to survive abuse (ie being dropped, dirty conditions, etc), and have batteries that are designed to last longer, recharge more times, and be able to be recharged by more power sources. Seriously — I want some of these features on mine…
And (to chime in with some Taiwan pride) it’s made by Quanta Computer (a large Taiwanese ODM manufacturer of electronics, and the ODM manufacturer of Apple’s new Intel-based Powerbooks)! 
OLPC’s (One Laptop Per Child) hope is to ship it directly to education ministries around the world and plan on doing so as soon as they get confirmed and paid orders for several million units.
