Steve Ballmer's $100 PC Is Here

SolarPC announces in a press release that it has built the first fully functional $100 modern PC, the SolarLite. It is the size of a book (9" x 7" x 1.75"), weighs 3 pounds, and consumes only 10 watts, allowing it to run off of a solar power cell, car battery, or human-powered (bicycle) generator. The kicker? The press release clearly states

In addition, it serves as a response to last month's challenge by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer for the computer industry to build a $100 PC.

Now, I'll be the first to say that this could be one of those cases where a company makes an outlandish claim in order to get a mention on Slashdot and some early financing, but what if it were true? Ballmer's point was that a $100 PC would allow people to concentrate on software, not hardware, meaning people could afford the software and not pirate it. God knows, if I had to buy a $300 video card to play Half-Life 2, I would have downloaded the game. Hardware purchases can make it harder to pay for software, and there is a decent PC that can be sold for $100, making it a nice commodity.

What does my ideal $100 PC have? No monitor, keyboard, or software, since most people have those, and those who don't can get their own at reasonable costs. As for the hardware: 1 gigahertz processor, 10 gigabyte hard drive, 128 megabytes of RAM, a 48x CD drive, and onboard sound and video. Based on prices on Froogle, that can be had for $70, so since OEM's get sweetheart deals, it should be doable to put it all together in a working system.