It's a crank. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has dismissed a WiFi-enabled, Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop aimed at bringing computers to developing economies as a "$100 gadget". The lime-green devices run on electromotive energy from a wind-up mechanism--thus allowing the machines to be used in areas lacking a regular power supply. But Barrett thinks a computer's features are more important than its price.

Decide for yourself. The One Laptop Per Child non-profit association, first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media lab at the World Economic Forum last January, claims the machine will "be able to do almost everything except store huge amounts of data". The current specifications of the rugged laptop, which has "USB ports galore", are 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The United Nations has heralded the cheap laptops--which will be shipped early next year to school children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria--as an effective way to spread computers across the world.