Mass OLPC Production Begins

eldavojohn writes to tell us that mass production of the first XO laptops has officially started. "The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)"

How about

[Anonymous Coward]

Give 2, get 0. Why would anyone want one of these other than for novelty? It'll sit in your closet after you mess around with it for an hour.

Internet

[dslmodem]

Do they come with free internet? Or a low cost internet option?

Re:How about

[jay-be-em]

I agree, I probably wouldn't want one much for myself, but I am considering doing
this and giving one to my 8yo niece who is starting to mess around with computers.

I need to do a bit more research about what exactly she could do with the machine
though...

It's about time.

[Forge]

After following it's development from concept through revised designs and explanation of the rational for it's features.

Frankly I feel like it's already part mine. Baring unavailability or some weird sales structure, I plan to get one. Or a few.

What choice do I have when my 15 Month old is monopolizing the main desktop at home?

Re:How about

[pdxdada]

I'm buying one of these because I want to have a computer I don't have to worry about. This thing is designed to be dropped, to have stuff spilled on it, to thrown in a bag. I'm buying one of these because I travel a lot and when I travel all I want to do is check my e-mail, read some documents, and maybe take some notes and not worry that every bump or drop of my bag will spell doom for my laptop. And finally I'm buying one because it can do all those things and if I do manage to kill it, lose it or it gets stollen at $400 it's not the end of the world. Call it a toy if you want, but I've wanted something similar for quite a while and I do plan to get a lot of use out of mine.

Re:Insightful??

[jay-be-em]

There are a lot of arguments relating to this in the book Guns, Germs and Steel.
I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. According to the author it comes
down to geography and (related to geography) the availability of native domesticable
plant and animal species -- which is the one resource that matters most. The Eurasian
continent had them, the Americas, Africa and Australia did not.

It's a fascinating book with loads of information. I understand the difficulty
people have with the question you pose -- it's not at all obvious. While treating
these peoples (Native American, South American, Native Australians, Africans ...)
as inferiors for so long was/is not justified, it's understandable why
so many people assumed they were an inferior subspecies -- it in fact takes a lot
of analysis to figure out why their societies are so behind Eurasian based societies.

Now, I agree the OLPC may not do anything. I think it depends on what is included a lot.
I worked as a mathematics and physics teacher for a few years in West Africa. In my opinion
if the OLPC can serve as a substitute for the relatively expensive school books students
are expected to purchase today it would be a massive help -- and in fact cheaper, OLPC and
co wouldn't need to give these machines away if they could show the value of them. That's
all of course beyond the IT educational component of the thing, which seems to be the focus
at OLPC. From what I've seen on the wiki it looks like the ebooks component of the project
is pretty undeveloped.

If the thing was packed full of 12 years of well made interactive textbooks, it would be
a Godsend. I'm a bit worried though that it's going to be more of a toy that kids play
around with -- IM, WWW, email, etc.

Just my 2 cents.