IT sounds like a marriage of incompatibles - the modern age of computers with the distinctly old-style idea of getting your power by winding something up, like a child's clockwork train, for example.

But in fact one or two people have been toying with the brainwave of combining the two and coming up with the wind-up computer.

This is no wind-up (of the leg-pull variety, that is), there is clearly a huge market out there if the Third World is to join the technological revolution, often in places beyond the reach of conventional electricity and phone lines.

And this week at the World Summit on the Information Society there was unveiled a wind-up laptop for £58 designed to be used by children in developing countries.

It is a machine which comes with the approval of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced plans to have millions of the foldable lime green laptops in production by the end of 2006.

They are designed to be powered by a wind-up crank and with very low power consumption, a combination of conventional computer and electronic book.

A child can control the laptop, using a cursor at the back of the machine or a touchpad on the front. It can be held and used like a handheld games console and can function as a TV.

Now we can well imagine that there might be people in this country who would feel attracted to this low-tech and hopefully low-cost introduction to the brave new world of computers.

But we have to say that there are doubters, not least among them Trevor Baylis OBE, the inventor of the clockwork radio who also lays claim to demonstrating the world's first wind-up computer.

And a machine that is cheap to buy and to operate will seemingly still incur fairly sizeable costs if it is to be connected to the internet.

Bearing all that in mind, it is too late to be dropping hints about a wind-up computer for this Christmas - production is not due to start until February - but keep it in mind for next year.

For this year, how about a wind-up torch or wind-up phone charger. The future could be clockwork Orange!