Starting today U.S. and Canadian residents can buy the much touted "$100" One Laptop per Child notebook for $400. By paying extra for the XO laptop you'll also be donating one to be given to a child in the developing world. Today's program is being called G1G1 (Get One Give One). The G1G1 offer runs through November 26 when the OLPC stops taking orders.
T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary T-Mobile HotSpot access to people who donate an XO laptop to a child in a developing country through the campaign. Another incentive, according to the OLPC, is that $200 of the $400 cost is tax-deductible.
Today marks the first chance the public has been able to buy an XO laptop. The XO notebook is the brainchild of MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte, who in 2002 set out to create a $100 laptop to "provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education," according to the OLPC.
Cost overruns and component shortages have been blamed for raising the initial price of the XO laptop which had been hoped to be $100. Today the cost of one XO laptop is $190. The $400 deal for two laptops includes some padding for the cost of sending one of the laptops to a remote location.
A fee-based tech support service will be available for XO customers. The OLPC explains buyers of the XO laptop should view themselves as "participants in the G1G1 initiative (and) to think of themselves as members of an international educational movement rather than as 'customers.'"
