Libya to by 1.2m laptops

The Libyan government has agreed to provide its 1.2 million school children with a cheap and durable laptop computer from the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organisation by June 2008, reports BBC News.

OLPC says manufacture of the $100 laptops powered by a wind-up crank will begin next year. The laptops can be used as conventional computers or electronic books. The computers will be covered in rubber to make them extra-tough, and have a power cable that also acts as a carrying strap.

If the project is completed on schedule, Libya will become the first country to offer the simple laptops to its school children. OLPC says other agreements have been reached with countries like Argentina, Brazil and Thailand, but deals have not yet been finalised.

Intel has released a baseband card it says will help expedite the process of setting up WiMax base stations and reduce development and lifecycle management costs, reports Techtree.

The report says the Intel NetStructure WiMax Baseband Card is the first standards-based WiMax baseband module built to the AdvancedMC specification. It also has a low power consumption, which makes it possible to create a base station that runs on such alternate energy sources as solar power.

According to Intel, the new baseband card is an of-the-shelf building block that is aimed at advancing WiMax technology and helping equipment manufacturers improve the flexibility, development time and cost of wireless broadband solutions.

The personal records of thousands of UK consumers have turned up on a computer recovered from criminals in the US, reports CIO.com.

London`s Metropolitan Police Computer Crime Unit says 83 000 e-mail addresses, credit card numbers and online transaction files had been discovered on the PC during an operation by US authorities.

Police believe the files were stolen from about 2 300 computers using a backdoor Trojan infection able to log passwords. UK police are contacting the people involved, as well as their banks and ISPs. The police say the case provides evidence that Internet crime is still low-risk and effective.

IBM has released a version of its Notes collaboration software that can be stored on a USB Flash memory stick or an iPod.

ZDNet says the aim of the initiative is to give employees more mobility, allowing them to use USB ports on different computers to log in and check e-mail. The latest version of Notes also adds support for the really simple syndication (RSS) protocol, which will allow people to receive notification of feeds, such as blogs.

IBM says the mobile Notes client and RSS feed support are part of the company`s plan to take advantage of popular Web collaboration tools.