OLPC offers one-for-two to generous North Americans
Give One. Get One.
For the next 15 days, it's not just One Laptop per Child. It's One Laptop per Donor.
Early Monday morning, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association launched its Give One, Get One programme for donors in the US and Canada. Over the next two weeks, if you donate $399 to the foundation, one nifty Nicholas Negroponte laptop will go to a child in need and another will go to you. Click here if you'd like to play.
Nifty Nicholas Negroponte laptop
Previously, North American tech fans couldn't get their hands on the much-discussed XO laptop, designed specifically for children in developing countries. Measuring 9.5 x 9 x 1.25 inches and weighing about 1.5 kilograms, the XO includes a 433-MHz AMD Geode LX-700 processor, 256MB of memory, and a 7.5 inch display. But it looks mighty cool. And you get an SD memory card slot.
What's more, half your $399 donation is tax deductible, and donors in the US also get a year's worth of free access to T-Mobile's HotSpot Wi-Fi service. That comes in handy when you're drinking bad coffee at Starbucks.
Mass production of the XO began this week at a new Quanta factory in Changshu, China. And last week, Electronic Arts said it would donate a copy of the original SimCity for each and every XO shipped. ®
COMMENTS
Friend has to pay for it!
Payment is via PayPal which only allows a shipping address in the same country as the credit card (normally fair enough). Therefore you have to get your friend to pay for it and then reimburse them.
Of course, if you wanted to give them the bonus of being able to claim the $199 tax credit that might be a lot easier.
Note that the deal comes with massive disclaimers as to when you might actually get your hands on the device. Certainly, nobody is going to be able to get their mitts on one in time to provide feedback for anyone else looking to buy.
Re: Starbucks Coffee
Not only is Starbucks coffee crap, but it is overpriced. Their hot chocolate is not bad, though. Offhand, I can think of 3 chains that make better coffee than Starbucks, although they are all as expensive, but in thier case you don't mind as the coffee is decent.
Of course, Starbucks is spreading like a malignant tumour across the face of Britain, so the other chains will soon be out of business.
I can think of 3 places in London where there are now 3 Starbucks in a 2 block radius and I am sure there are more. The common factor in all cases is that there is or was a branch of a competing chain nearby before they opened the other 2 Starbucks.
Starbucks, getting a OLPC out of USA, etc
Reporting on OLPA - great. Being clever and ironic - fine, what El Reg is known for. But it seems there's something very British about simply being rude to all and sundry, particularly when it's foreign. If you lived in the USA you would know that Starbucks has an excellent reputation for coffee, etc. You might know somewhere that's better locally, and the UK reputation may be different, but the hot spots are offered in the USA only (as it says clearly), where it is possible to enjoy an excellent coffee or tea.
As for getting one to Blighty .... i might be able to help someone out here, if i knew how to get in touch with you and you know you want to do it. No idea if you can claim it as a tax free charitable donation in the UK, that kind of things is well understood in the USA annual tax returns.
Generosity ??
Maybe OLPC would do rather better if they opened up this program to the rest of the 'civilised' world. After all, we can't just rely on generous Americans to solve all the worlds problems - can we ?? Maybe the rest of us in the West would like to participate, after all I was allowed to register my interest for the program even though I have a .uk email address. I can see them appearing all over ebay shortly as 'generous' Americans attempt to cash in.
UK?
So how do we get one of these XO's in the UK then? Befirend an American and have them permanently export it to us here this side of the pond?
