One Laptop Per Geek

Have you been reading about that cool XO laptop, the result of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program and thought "I'd love to have one of those"? You can get one... in November.

For two weeks in November (12th through 26th) OLPC will offer a Give One - Get One program. For an anticipated price of $399, the OLPC folks will deliver an OLPC to you, plus deliver one to a deserving child in an emerging economy.

You can currently buy one for a child for $200, but you can't get one for yourself. If you sign up for a reminder at their site, they'll notify you shortly before the 2 week "give one - get one" program begins.

I'm tempted to do the program twice. Get one for me and one for my son. He'll be 2 months away from turning 3 come Christmas and he already loves to pound away on a spare keyboard we have so he can imitate Mommy and Daddy typing away at their keyboards. A real laptop that's been ruggedized to withstand environmental extremes, has no moving parts, and is specifically designed for kids, but which has enough power to be more than a mere toy... Pretty cool.

But here's my beef... On their current donation form, you can't say which country your donated OLPC should go to. They're planning to give them to children who fall through the cracks of participating governmental distribution programs.

That's wonderful, but I have my own priorities in where my charitable dollars go. I believe we could use a few million of those laptops right here in the United States. I also have a few "most favored nations" where I believe my charitable dollars would be best spent if I can't donate an XO laptop to a fellow American.

While it's interesting to consider doing the "give one - get one" program, and I'd like to get one, the fact that I have no say in where the one I'm giving goes may be the sticking point that prevents me from participating. Or maybe, if this spurs Intel to offer a similar deal on the Classmate PC with the ability to donate one locally, my dollars will go to that instead of OLPC.

OLPC XO laptop... $200. One for you, one for a needy kid... $399. Not having a say in where the laptop I donate goes... priceless.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Techno Thoughts, World Affairs.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.