Here’s what the beauty looked like:

Yep, I went down the rabbit hole all day yesterday. Decided that we have better, cheaper alternatives by just buying and hacking an older laptop.

It really was a fantastic idea, always hoped it would catch on but alas, the Chromebook took over in education spaces thanks to subsidies from Google for the data collection.

Yep. I do wish they would revisit the whole “water-resistant, rubber/plastic tought as a Tonka truck, drop-resistant, hand crank to charge-up” ideas though!

I feel all powerful. If I could only get the volume to work…

Working on that to see if I can get it to work.

Oh, I’ll look that one up, because I’m not familiar with it. Thanks!

Yeah, and I appreciate the goals it had, and even tho if failed, they tried. I am using mine and trying to figure out to post on Lemmy with it, but the browser is old and doesn’t do https sites, but if I can figure it out, I wanna use it for my lemmy machine. lol

Giving it a listen. Thank you!

Fun concept tho. Especially in 2005:

In late 2005, tech visionary and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte pulled the cloth cover off a small green computer with a bright yellow crank. The device was the first working prototype for Negroponte’s new nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, dubbed “the green machine” or simply “the $100 laptop.”

The $100 laptop would have all the features of an ordinary computer but require so little electricity that a child could power it with a hand crank. It would be rugged enough for children to use anywhere, instead of being limited to schools.

A Linux-based operating system would give kids total access to the computer — OLPC had reportedly turned down an offer of free Mac OS X licenses from Steve Jobs.

Here’s a nice little intro docu about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJYWc6NZt0&ab_channel=ThisDoesNotCompute

It just so happens I have one of the first ones from 2005. It’s been in my garage for 20 years. Fired it up as I read this article, and it still works: