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Give One Get One.


I firmly believe that education is key to progress: Understanding yourself, understanding each other and understanding the world around you. The more you can replace superstition with knowledge, blind attempts with skills or xenophobia with appreciation the more you can reduce suffering on this planet. You know the saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life".
Being a geek I was intrigued when Prof Negroponte announced his One Laptop Per Child project. Appealing to geeks on the planet the project opened for a short period of time the possibility to own one of these machines. This opportunity is entitled Give One Get One. At USD 399.- plus shipping you will get one laptop and one laptop will be given to a child in a developing nation.
The only catch: you need a US shipping address. But working for IBM that wasn't a real problem. So I ordered one today. The drawback: I have to wait until I'm in the US next time. Until then others can play with the box.

Posted by on 26 November 2007 | Comments (2) | categories: Technology

Comments

  1. posted by Dwight Wilbanks on Wednesday 28 November 2007 AD:
    Mine was on order early in the morning, the first day they were available, I've been following the project since it was a discussion, before being a project.

    I'm really looking forward to getting one, whats really interesting is how differently a product gets designed if you "want" it to last, instead of wanting the consumer to buy more consumables.

    I was especially impressed with the whole idea of a laptop motherboard being a "child replaceable" component.

    The CPU can go to sleep without turning off the screen (for reading)
    The CPU and screen can turn off and leave the mesh networking forwarding agent working.

    Its really an impressive example of "out of the box" thinking!
  2. posted by Slawek Rogulski on Wednesday 28 November 2007 AD:
    Doesn't VPost work with laptops? I know they will forward books and such.

    As for the laptop I know it is touted as a technical marvel on a budget. Have a look at this:
    Leveraging India as India stands up http://tinyurl.com/2ggoml (Google Video)
    They seem to have made it into a fine art in India delivering products and services on a shoestring budget.