Last week I posted about the upcoming opportunity to buy an OLPC “XO” laptop for your own and donate one to a developing country at the same time.
Yesterday, the OLPC Foundation announced that the government of Uruguay has agreed to buy 100,000 computers, with an option to purchase an additional 50,000 at the $199.00 price point which has become the official price of the so-called “$100 laptop”. That’s the first actual purchase, even though there were rumors last year about a $1 million deal with Nigeria.
Meanwhile, in the event you were thinking about buying an XO laptop as part of the BOGO program next month, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue offered his review of the computer in yesterday’s paper. His verdict is that the laptop is a “kid magnet” given its ease of use and rugged design. He points out a few drawbacks which may or may not be important decision-making factors if you’re thinking about buying one, as we are. For example, because the laptop runs on its own flavor of Linux, it will not automatically run popular Windows or Mac software — I don’t see this as a huge problem because of the vast number of Linux software packages available, but if you’re deeply invested in a Windows or Mac environment at home, it will present challenges. On the hardware side, it does not have a built-in CD/DVD drive as most laptops do, and that could be an inconvenience if you travel with it because you’d need to lug along an external drive. Also, it’s internal storage is limited to a 1 GB flash drive, so you’d also need some sort of external storage solution if you wanted to be able to save large files like videos or keep a collection of music, or so on. Again, not a complete deal-breaker, but worth thinking through the consequences of when making the purchase.
For my six-year old, who only really cares about visiting some websites and playing some online games, it’s still a good solution. For your middle-schooler who needs to write reports as Word documents, play the latest computer games, and mashup MP3s, it has some drawbacks. For the children in the classrooms in Uruguay or Nigeria, it’s a godsend…and that’s the important part.
