The eKiosk’s are the heart of the Cyber-tigi model and the cost of ownership/operation will greatly affect are ability to develop a sustainable economic business model for this project - clearly it the most important hardware decision we need to make.

Basic requirements include:

* Being able to operate in harsh Malian conditions - extreme dust and temperatures in access of 50C/115F.
* Power efficient since most will be installed off the power grid and thus reliant on solar. For example, our Desert PC only used 30W vs. 300W for a traditional computer. Besides generating much less eat, a 30W computer can be powered by a single 55W solar panel vs. six for the 300W system.
* Durable. Minimum 3 years lifespan in very rough conditions.

As part of our work working with Radio stations in Northern Mali we helped develop the Desert PC - an ultralow wattage, sealed, fanless computer based on VIA components. Since the hardware is still holding up very well in the sites we installed them in Northern Mali in the regions around Tomboctou, it seemed like these systems would make obvious sense for our eKiosks. We were thus thrilled when Via, under their PC-1 initiative, has introduced the Power Heat Dust (PHD) system which they hope will help extend computing to developing regions of the world where heat, dust, and unreliable sources of energy make traditional computer systems less appropriate. Since they are very similar to the desert system we prototyped, we believe the PHD would be ideal for the eKiosks. We are hopeful that our partners at Via will provide some of these systems so we can see how they hold up real world conditions in the field during our project.

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