$100 Laptop For Kids Worldwide…starting here!

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

See www.laptop.org where the group One Laptop Per Child…to give the more than 2 billion children a chance at a computer. Well, for two weeks in November O.L.P.C. slightly changed its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world — for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called “Get 1, Give 1,” and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country.

Check out the complete article in today’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/circuits/04pogue.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin)