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By David Rothman

OLPC laptop with video chat runningE-book fans can appreciate the pluses of easy switching between, say, a book, a word-processor and a browser. You don’t just want to read. You want to be able, if you’re a student or a professional, to act on the information you pick up.

Now suppose even the $100 laptop—yes, that’ll be the price eventually—offered smooth multitasking. And so I read with interest the news of a beefed-up OLPC machine that actually uses less power.

Other wrinkles—and why e-bookers should care

Better video conferencing and more potential as an XP machine are among the other possibilities discussed by the independent OLPC News. And I can think of two more as well—Sophie and dotReader (especially if OSoft will get behind OpenReader for real). Granted, the OLPC machine was developed for the Third World. But now that the low-cost technology exists, it should also be of interest to those of us in developed countries—check out the latest news from Greece, hardly to be confused with Libya. With OLPC’s advanced screen technology, we’re indeed talking about an e-book reader in disguise at a fraction of the cost of, say, the Sony Reader. Let’s hope we’ll eventually see improved OLPC-style machines on sale at Walmart—ready to help bridge both the educational and digital divides and serve even well-off e-book readers.

Elsewhere on the hardware scene: The Zune has been turned into an e-book reader with limited capabilities, it may be possible for batteries to appear in front of e-book display via see-through plastic, and there’s a new video of the Polymer Vision Readius (via MobileRead).

 
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