The $100 laptops planned for children around the world might turn out to be as revolutionary for their security measures as for their low-cost economics.

The machines have garnered the most attention _ and some skepticism _ for the design elements that will help keep their price low. Among other things, the computers will employ the free Linux operating system, flash memory instead of a hard drive and a microprocessor that is slow by today’s standards but requires minimal power.

But programmers also have been taking advantage of the start-from-scratch nature of the project to design security protocols that they hope will greatly surpass those found in mass-market computers today.

The designers are still testing their approach with outside security experts _ which is widely considered wiser than keeping such matters secret. But already they believe the security setup could make it unnecessary for the laptops to have anti-virus software.

Standard computer design generally lets most any program access any file stored anywhere on the machine. That is one reason why flaws in programs can be exploited by outsiders to steal or erase private information.

By contrast, the $100 laptops will force any application to run in “a walled garden” and limit the files it can access, said Ivan Krstic, a software architect at One Laptop Per Child focused on security.

Even if the security were to fail, Krstic believes a specialized encryption technology will prevent the BIOS _ the software that runs a computer when it is initially turned on _ from being overwritten. That means the PC could not be rendered unable to boot up.

Starting from scratch offers a clean slate — an opportunity to correct design faults accepted as “standard”.  It makes great sense to start with a secure basis — that our industry leaders have been scrambling backwards to retrofit.