j’s scratchpad

Finally! The deal you’ve been waiting for!

For a limited time in November, you yourself can buy one One Laptop Per Child XO laptop and at absolutely no additional cost send another laptop free to a needy child overseas for a mere $399!

If you’d much rather give than receive, you can give a laptop to a child in a developing country for $200 and not get one yourself.

I spent a few hours yesterday showing off an XO during the xkcd meetup. One of the most popular questions people asked me is “Where’s the hand crank?” Possibly the next most popular question was how/where/when/for how much they could buy one. Here’s the answer. The Boston Globe has more details today.

Oh, y’all want to know about the machine. The one I was holding* is a newer model I hadn’t seen before. It has the new hard rubber antennae, a rough surface so it will stay on slanted desks easier, and a colored XO logo on the top. It runs off electricity and a battery, not a hand crank. It had one of the keyboards intended for children who speak English and some European languages, I believe. I forget the exact type of keyboard and to which regions the laptops with those keyboards go. I don’t have a photo of it and certainly not one of me holding it, but I’m sure at least one exists somewhere on the ‘net because about 100 people ogled it, the majority of those took pictures, and some even put their shyness aside to hold it and use it.

*No, that’s not me, but the machine was in my care when he came over to hold it. Posting photos of myself on my weblog violates one of my basic rules of blogging. I actually haven’t found an image of me with the machine yet, surprisingly.

Thanks, cjb!

Addenda 9/25: The New York Times shares some info, too.

10/17: I learned from a friend that misinformation is circulating about the laptop deal. These laptops are not standard laptops. It’s not like you’re paying $400 to get a Dell or HP or ThinkPad or Lenovo or something similar. For more information, follow the links above and read the details. Though they are really fabulous machines with lots of cool technology, they are smaller than common laptops because they are designed for children. They don’t come with common word processing and spreadsheet programs. They don’t have CD, zip, diskette, etc., drives.

Also, many people are assuming that because ordering might begin in November, it could be possible to get a laptop in time for the December gift giving holidays. Note that OLPC is not making any statements about when the machines might ship.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 10:52 am and is filed under Computers. 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.