Is anyone actually planning to buy an XO laptop using the Give-One-Get-One program?
Asked by
Vincentt (
8094
)
October 7th, 2007
The XO laptop (or $100-laptop) looks great and all
but I was wondering whether there was anyone who is actually planning to participate in this program? Is the laptop appealing enough? Or perhaps someone who just donates such a laptop without buying one himself?
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8 Answers
If I only had a desktop and were looking for a cheap, light, and useful laptop, I’d go for it.
Even though there are “normal” laptops (read: with harddrive, etc.) available?
its actually 194 dollars a piece which means you pay about 400 dollars for give-one-get-one.Since i can get a brand new fully functional HP laptop for 450 dollars, i will never get an XO laptop.
The laptop is not meant to be appealing to us. The give one get one program is a way to finance getting laptops to those poor countries. The makers are fully aware that it doesn’t compete with windows/mac laptops.
N.b., I would look at buying one for $200—but agreed that the $400 price tag is a bit much.
However, the XO laptop has the following “cool things”:
– Spillproof keyboard
– transflective screen (works in sunlight with the backlight off)
– Small, lightweight (9.5×9x1.25, 3.5#)
Things that sort of suck in the current model:
– Handcrank isn’t built in
– color choices suck (bright green, apparently)
– Keyboard is small-ish for adults
– It costs 2x what it really should
– only 1GB of flash
– May or may not be hackable…
The 400$ tag is you actually buying two. One for you, one for someone in another country.
The whole “oh, i can get a windows box which is much better” misses the point of the program completely.
It’s an ingenious piece of hardware, and if I had a kid, I’d get one in an instant. I can’t imaging how much fun it would have been if when I was growing up I could press a key and see all the code underneath a program and start changing it.
Granted, the mesh network only gets really cool when you have a bunch of people around you using it, but still, it’s nifty technology.
People, please realize that one of the “cool things” you get when you pay $400 for an XO is that you also buy one for a kid in a developing country. I am mainly wondering whether this, like it is for Andrew if he would have had kids, would actually be enough incentive for some to buy this. Thanks.
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