Designing the $100 Laptop

How difficult is it to design something that’s supposed to cost only $100? Not very hard actually, except if that object is supposed to be a laptop–the cheapest of which today retails for something upwards of $500.

Here’s where industrial design gets into high gear. Yves Béhar, who’s leading the design team for the OLPC programme, is tasked with just that. It might help that his previous works include a massive Swarovski chandelier for the JFK airport, a noise-cancelling jawbone headset for Aliph, comfy Birkenstock sandals (mmm, gotta love ‘em), and the leaf light, a lamp that’s cool to the touch, among others. To me, Béhar’s design concepts seem to speak “making the impossible possible.”

In an interview with Wired, “Everything on the laptop serves at least two purposes,” Béhar says.

One of his first decisions was to stick all of the computer’s guts behind the display, like an iMac, instead of beneath the keyboard. That simplified the wiring (the motherboard and display no longer had to communicate through a fragile hinge) and cut costs, but also made the machine top-heavy. So he came up with two fixes: One model, codenamed Blue, had the battery beneath the keyboard to give the laptop a nice ergonomic tilt and act as a counterweight to the heavy display; another, codenamed Yellow, was propped up by a sturdy handle behind the keyboard.

This redefines the meaning of “cheap” in laptops. Designing “cheap” is no longer for tacky unreliable gadgetry. Now cheap comes with efficiency and purpose in mind. Well, let’s hope this efficiency in design spills over into the design of every other laptop in the future. Somehow an alternative source of power and a half-mile WiFi network range seems like a nice idea.

August 1st, 2006 Posted by J. Angelo Racoma in News at 5:53 am Comment Now! »

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