Fund raising idea
Web Kiosk Mode
As I understand it the two main problems the project needs to overcome are financing and having a sufficiently large production run to reduce prices.
My suggestions allow the laptop to run in a Web Kiosk mode, and sell it in large numbers to businesses and retailers.
It could be used to provide access to corporate web sites at conferences/trade shows and in shops.
All it would need to be is cheep, and easily configurable for it to out perform any other solution. If a few Large retailers could be convinced that being able to hand a customer the device to allow them to show the clerk exactly what they saw on the company website, without having the overhead of installing and maintaining customer computer access, both problems could be solved.
