A team of experts is trying to come up with a computer that can be made for $12.

Derek Lomas, Jesse Austin-Breneman and other designers have a plan to try and create a computer that Third World residents can buy. The ideas are being hammered out at this month’s MIT International Development Design Summit. It is an uphill battle, MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte has been working since 2005 to provide $100 laptops to Third World kids and still can't manage it.

Lomas and his colleagues want to knock the price down even further. The computer will be a cheap keyboard and Nintendo-like console which will connect into televisions. The internal parts will use Apple II systems and will manage basic Web access. A six-member team at the MIT conference is working on writing improved programs and hooking the devices to the Web through cell phones.

The group also wants to add memory chips - which the devices currently lack - to allow users to write and store their own programs. X

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