OLPC $100 laptop looking for some help |
In an effort to spur some sales of Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 XO laptop (now selling for $188 each), the OLPC is offering the low-cost notebooks to consumers in the U.S. and Canada in a “Give One, Get One” program. The program will run for only two weeks from November 12 to November 26 and will offer the XO laptop for $400 each with proceeds of each sale going to provide a XO laptop for the children of a poor country.
According to Negroponte, the donated laptops will help trigger more sales of the laptops to different countries who are now considering a purchase. The first 25,000 people that purchase an XO laptop can expect delivery before Christmas with the rest of the orders likely arriving around January. The limited time offer is partly due to tax reasons but also to create some excitement around the promotion. The hope is that most will be motivated to purchase an XO laptop with intention of giving one more than getting one.
The XO laptops feature built-in wireless networking with low power consumption that can be powered up without an external power source using crank or pull cord. They run a unique interface built on the Linux OS and could possibly run Windows in the future and boast a display that can be seen outdoors in direct sunlight, which is something hard to come buy with most laptops today.
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Just think, if instead of wasting the development money on an exercise in post-colonial paternalism by overpaid academics and consultants, they had used it to microfinance development of a machine by the people who were actually going to use it, then it probably *would* have cost only $100, and you might have got a cheap smartphone into the bargain too….