I’ve been following the One Laptop Per Child project for a couple years now, and have anxiously awaited the day I’d be able to own one myself. A couple of days ago they started taking orders for their Give One Get One promotion, wherein you can spend $399 to get an OLPC computer for yourself, one for a child in a developing country, and also year’s worth of T-Mobile HotSpot WiFi usage to boot. (The latter is a $350 value in and of itself.) Also, $199 of the total cost is tax-deductable, seeing’s how you spent it to help fund a non-profit.
Aside from the coolness of having a tiny, rugged, green, Linux PC that uses 1/10th the energy consumption of an ordinary laptop, it also serves as a WiFi router and its swivel screen allows it to be configured as a laptop, an eBook reader, or a hand-held gaming system. It also has a built-in camera and microphone, and a huge multi-use touchpad that allows you to not only move the mouse cursor, but also draw and write as well.
The user interface on it has been designed from the ground up to be intuitively operated by those with zero computer experience, and it comes with software to do all sorts of fun things that I’d have killed to be able to do as a child. Animation, video editing, web browsing, creative writing, drawing, games, etc. All of the included apps are written in Python, and there’s even a dedicated keyboard key to display (and edit) the source code of any currently running program. (How cool is that?) There are a bunch more applications currently in development specifically for the OLPC system, but I don’t see why you couldn’t run any old Linux/X11/GTK apps on it with very minimal hassle.
If, like me, you want to do something to help make the world a better place — and are also an insufferable nerd who feels compelled to own gadgets and make them do things which they mightn’t have been entirely intended — the “Give One Get One” deal is a pretty darn good choice. Orders can be placed until November 26th.
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