Compact and extremely portable laptop, the Packard Bell EasyNote BG45-U300 offers value for money. Weighing a mere 1.6kg, it is a highly portable laptop and easy to carry from one office to another. Designed to attract attention, it is a stylish machine with a black matt and gloss, brushed aluminium finish. Since it is a single-spindle machine, it does not have a built-in optical drive. Right above the keyboard are touch-sensitive buttons for switching Wi-Fi on and off and a second button for dropping the laptop into Eco mode. A truly mobile laptop, it has a 12.1 inch Super-TFT screen that swings back on rear-mounted hinges. The screen is wide and bright enough to be used in a variety of locations. Good value for money, the notebook from Packard Bell offers a glossy screen and a resolution of 1280×800 pixels with an aspect ratio of 16:10. The keyboard is slightly crowded though the build quality is fine.

The laptop is powered by Intel 1.86GHz Pentium Dual Core T2390 processor and supported with just 1024MB of memory. Thus, the notebook is not meant for multimedia purposes. The Pentium Dual Core processor is efficient and fast and capable of running multiple applications at once. The Packard Bell EasyNote BG45-U-300 notebook has Windows Vista Basic as its operating system, which anyways lacks many of the multimedia features found in other versions. As for expansion ports, the notebook has the most basic ports, all of which are located on the sides of the notebook. There are 3 USB ports and a VGA-out port. On the front there is a SDHC card reader. Ideal for people who need to use an ultra portable laptop for short periods of time, this notebook has basic performance and battery life.

One Laptop Per Child, popularly known as the OLPC project, is gaining success day by day at a very fast pace. Aimed at stimulating the growth and development of children in developing nations, the project has put a smile on 600,000 children so far and still continues to make more and more children happy everyday.

According to the OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte, 600,000 children in developing nations are using the OLPC’s ultra-cheap XO Laptop as of now. He also clarifies that this figure does not include the number of promised laptops, rather it shows the total laptops that have actually been delivered into the hands of children and are being used by them at schools and homes. The laptops donated under the OLPC project consist of small Asus Eee PC sized laptops running on Sugar OS (a Linux based operating system). These laptops come equipped with all the necessary applications, including a word processor, games, music maker and much more, to help children learn and comprehensively develop their computing skills.

So far the shipment of XO laptops has been made in 31 countries including Peru, Rwanda, and Cambodia and according to Negroponte Palestine will be the next nation to receive the shipment. He also said that by mid 2009 every single child in Uruguay will have a laptop.

Tags for this article: laptop, children

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is really becoming a hot favourite in developing countries. Although the XO laptops are minimally powered, they are a perfect tool for making kids computer literate at a minimal cost. The goal of the programme is astoundingly to develop laptops that are even less expensive than the Asus Eee PC 701 4G. The only issue that the OLPC programme has faced is that the laptops used in this project are running on Linux based Sugar Operating System instead of Windows. While in some countries Sugar is considered as a great operating system, others argue that as the global workspace is dominated by the Windows based systems, the students should practice on the same platform; otherwise they will turn into computer literates but still incompetent in the Windows environment.

Thus the OLPC has decided to introduce new XO laptops running Windows XP Pro. As of now, Peru will be the first country to experience these newbies. In addition to this, a dual boot edition is also expected in future. To find out which OS the kids prefer, they were given both the laptops to work and play. The results were amazing. The kids find it easier to work on windows based XO machines but they still want to stick to the Sugar OS because of the array of pre-installed learning games that come with it. Obviously, both the operating systems offer excellent opportunities to learn and enjoy.

Reasonable performance, solid quality and style are the attributes with which one would use to start describing the Satellite pro L20 by Toshiba. The laptop is powered by the Celeron M 370 processor, which gives the notebook PC a strong base. The running speed of the laptop is put at 1.5 GHz with 1 MB of level 2 cache.

The configuration has been kept on the lower side, so that the laptop does not go overboard with unnecessary additions. The memory has been kept at a minimal 256 MB ram so that the laptop will have to run fewer applications at one time in order to avoid the decrease in processing speed. Clearly, the computer is for those who wish to save money, and can even rival the minimalist Asus Eee PC 700 2G Surf in terms of price. The laptop surprisingly does not feature Intel’s integrated graphics but still manages to put on a good show in the video department because of the Radeon R200 Express by ATI.

The computer has a lot of reserve power to handle the Windows Vista operating system by Microsoft and features a screen resolution of 1024X768.

The integrated 40 GB hard disk drive provides enough space for a user to store data and the 14 inch screen is not that bad either. The company’s official website has a full list of all the laptop’s features and specifications.

The machine seems to be pretty economical and those who have a tight budget should go for this one, as it can at least perform all the essential and rudimentary computing tasks.