Download Squad

Beginning November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a special twofer - when you spend $399, one laptop will be donated to a child in need in a developing country, and another one will be sent to your child. Of course, you could just spend $399 and have the laptops go to two children in developing countries where they have little access to education, or on the other hand, you could reward yourself for doing such a good deed and have your own child benefit. Either way, you win and children win.

If you're interested in the 'give one, get one,' promotion, you can sign up and OLPC will send you a reminder email.

OLPC was started by Nicholas Negroponte and a core of Media Lab veterans. Its vision is to empower children in the remotest parts of the world and expose them to knowledge and their own creative and problem solving potential via laptops, the ultimate portal to ideas.

About the interface
Check out our previous video walkthrough of Sugar, OLPC's user interface. As you would expect for a $199 laptop, there aren't a lot of fat apps and video games bells and whistles, however there's plenty of opportunity for learning and connecting.



About the laptop
The XO is Linux-based, with a dual-mode display-both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white, reflective, and sunlight-readable at three times the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have three USB ports and an SD-card slot for expansion. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops are designed to be extremely power efficient, enabling the use of innovative power systems (including wind-up).

[Thanks FF!]