I'm speaking, of course, of the Apple II.

Students at MIT are taking the old Apple II architecture and developing Internet capable computers that could be sold for about $12.

A $12 computer of sorts - a cheap keyboard and Nintendo-like console - already exists in India, where people hook the devices to home TVs to run simple games and programs.

But Lomas, an American graduate student who stumbled across the computers in Bangalore while on an internship last summer, hit on the idea of upgrading the devices’ 1980s-era technology.

He and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology symposium hope to soup up the systems - which are based on old Apple II computers - with rudimentary Web access and more.

“My generation all had Apple IIs that we learned to type and play games on,” the 27-year-old said. “If we can get buy-in from programmers, we can develop these devices and give (Third World) schools Apple II computer labs like the ones I grew up with."

I guess I'm a sucker for the low end of the computer revolution. Certainly you can buy a multi-core monster with all the bells and whistles for a few thousand dollars, but I've always been fascinated by what a few dollars and a lot of ingeniuity can accomplish. We will have crossed a very important milestone when an Internet capable computer shows up in my kid's Happy Meal.

More cheap electronics blogging:

Back in December of 2006 I replaced my failing cellphone with a GoPhone. No, I didn't get fleeced with the pay-as-you-go deal. I dropped in the SIM from the last phone and it was good to go on my regular plan. At $20 it was so cheap that I considered it disposable. I could go through 3 or 4 of those a year and be money ahead on getting a new phone out of my service provider. I figured I'd use it for a few months and then get some flavor of smart phone.

That GoPhone lasted until late last month - more than a year and a half. It holds the record for longest service of any cellphone to be carried by Stephen Gordon. Actually it was still working. The only problem was that the ringer kept getting quieter until I couldn't hear it to take a call anymore. I replaced it with another cheap phone.

I'm sure at some point I'll step up to an iPhone - its far enough up the high end to offer sufficient value to make it worth the leap. But I see no reason to go middle-of-the-road on a cell phone. Why pay $100 for a mid-range phone when $20-$30 will get you something that has 95% of the mid-range features?