THERE'S BEEN much beard-scratching going on as to how Elonex can afford to build a laptop to sell for £100.

And having had a sneaky gander at the full spec sheet we can reveal much of what is under the hood of the wee beastie, although a question mark or two remains.

Elonex claims the whole caboodle is optimised for the Linux software it runs. The Linux is Debian flavoured and the little office suite that is bundled with it is all branded ONE. ONEInternet, ONEMail, ONEWord, etc.

As we surmised, storage comes in a 1Gb flash flavour. There's 128Mb of DDR-II memory, a seven-inch 800 by 480 LCD screen with stereo two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and audio Jack. Wibbling comes courtesy of a Lan/WLAN 10/100M Ethernet with WLAN 802.11g Antenna.

The chip remains a bit of an enigma though. The spec sheet describes it as a LNX Code 8 Mobile Processor running at 300MHz. But who designed it and where it is made, Elonex declines to tell us. The firm will be branding the chip itself and seems to be engaged in a bit of obfustication as to its provenance.

The frequency of 300MHz certainly sounds a bit weedy in this day and age. And users certainly won't be playing Crysis on the box. But they will be emailing and reading the INQ on their little machines, as well as spreading sheets and stuff, as befits the target educational market. It is also geared to playing music and includes the little customised programs ONEmusic and ONEmusicserver.

Options on the box will include greater storage capacity, more memory and a DVD re-writing optical drive, as well as a music keyboard and external speakers.

Whether it's any cop or not we'll have to wait to find out. µ

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Elonex preps £100 laptop