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November 11, 2008 4:46 PM PST

OLPC's Give One, Get One program to be rekindled Nov. 17

by Erica Ogg

Starting on Monday, One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop will be available through the Give One, Get One program again, this time facilitated by Amazon.com.

For $400, the nonprofit low-cost laptop program will send one XO to the purchaser and one to a school-age child in a developing country.

OLPC said in September that it wanted to revive last year's successful program, but didn't have the infrastructure to support the program alone.

Although Microsoft has started making Windows available for the OLPC, that extends only to those in developing markets like Colombia and Peru, not folks taking part in Give One, Get One.

For more about the upcoming Windows XP version of the XO, see the video below.

CNET News' Ina Fried contributed to this report.

Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica.
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by shane--2008 November 11, 2008 6:03 PM PST
thank you no. i might give both, but i don't want one.

don't get me wrong, it is a great idea and useful for kids in school, but i want a little more out of a laptop than what i can already get out of an iPhone.....
Reply to this comment
by bakedpatato November 11, 2008 9:45 PM PST
Can the iPhone:
edit documents?(no jailbreak)
watch Flash Videos?
play .ogg/.wmv/.wma/etc files?
Run a browser besides Safari?
Run programs in the background?(jailbreak don't count)
COPY AND PASTE?
Make you feel good that a kid in another country is gaining the skills that will make him relevant in world job market?
Run Linux?
Run Starcraft/CS/heck, Doom?
Run The GIMP(or Photoshop)?
the list goes on, but the most important thing is that you're donating a XO-1 to a kid who would may have otherwise not known what a computer was,and that XO may open up a new world of opportunities for them.
by vikramchauhan10 November 12, 2008 4:55 AM PST
Just wondering, why OLPC can not be made available in open market. This will make there manufacturing profitable. Remember that making great device is not enough, marketing is equally and sometime more important. There are many example at present, like marketing and hype of iphone compared to Nokia phones.
I want to purchase OLPC for the my village children, but no option.
Reply to this comment
by dragonbite November 12, 2008 6:28 AM PST
While it was successful when it first came out, the market has changed BECAUSE of the OLPC.

Many laptop makers are getting into the Netbook market that the OLPC indirectly pioneered.

I don't think they'll find it as successful this time around because for $400 I can get one of a number of Netbooks for myself that is more powerful and more familiar. I like the idea of getting one and passing another to a needy school child but selfishly I will want more out of my machine.

If it were more like a current Netbook, or contained an interface such as Gnome or KDE which I am more familiar with AND included the Grid computing technology then I may be more apt to try one but if it is the same as it was before then it's going to be a hard sell.
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by czmyt November 13, 2008 4:29 PM PST
This is a great program if you want to help get one of these computers into the hands of a child in a developing country. I got one through the original give-one, get-one program. It's NOT a very useful PC though. I also have an Asus Eee PC 901 which is about the same size but 100 times more useful since it has Windows XP on it. If you are thinking that this would make a nice little Web surfing notebook, I recommend that you get the run the virtual version of the software on your real PC to check it out. I am not down on Linux because I run it on several of my PCs; it makes a great server operating system. So my recommendation if you want a useful little notebook if to get one of the new netbooks that is available like the Acer One or the Asus Eee PC.
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