A research project at the MIT Media Lab has a plan for getting $100 laptops in the hands of millions of people around the world.

The laptops will have a 500 Mhz CPU, 1 gig of RAM, run on Linux, and will be optionally powered by a hand-crank or traditional power sources.

The goal of the project is to make the low-cost PC idea a grassroots movement that will spread in popularity. Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at MIT, said the idea is that governments will pay roughly $100 for the laptops and will distribute them for free to students.

"This is the most important thing I have ever done in my life," Negroponte said on Wednesday during a presentation at Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. "Reception has been incredible. The idea is simple. It's an education project, not a laptop project. If we can make education better--particularly primary and secondary schools--it will be a better world."

(via News.com article)