Bridging the digital divide
In a blog post Seybold also says his firm is "extremely conscious of the so-called 'digital divide'," and is "constantly looking for ways to bridge that gap."
"Accra is not just in Ghana, it's also here in the western world, in Michigan, in Ohio, in New York State, in California, literally everywhere. There are still more than fifteen million Americans who can't afford an own laptop, who have to go to a public library or live without access to the Internet at all, which is becoming increasingly difficult."
This, he said, was the reason his firm decided to build a laptop for those who can't afford to spend even a couple of hundred dollars on a machine, to make the Internet more accessible and affordable to those who need it most.
"Make no mistake, the Cherrypal is not a fancy system. It's small, just seven inch screen, no thrills and admittedly not exactly fast, though good enough to browse the web."
However, "everyone who has tried it has absolutely loved it!" he declared.
For those who can afford to splash out a bit more, Cherrypal says it has also just launched a redesign of its Bing laptop, featuring a 13.3-inch widescreen, an Intel N280 Atom processor (1.6 GHz), 1 GB DDRII memory, 160 GB HDD, 1.3 MP webcam, running Windows XP for $389.
