The One Laptop Per Child project is now offering one of their rugged machines for you and one for a child in a developing nation, for a total price of $399 (only 13 days left on that offer, and only if you live in North America). And Wal-Mart has apparently already sold out of the first run of their highly-touted $199 PC at their online store. It kind of makes you wonder just how much an OEM copy of Windows really adds to the cost of a computer — and that’s before adding Microsoft Office to the mix.
The Asus eeepc laptop seems to be the primary Linux-based sub-notebook offered through the retail channel outside of the third world (i.e. it’s a OLPC machine for the industrialized world), it costs about $210-$400US. It looks great as a computer to give to a kid. Cheap, small, and inexpensive.
Yes, I’ve been impressed by what I’ve read of it. I hope to see one in person next week, and see if it might be worth getting one. I rather doubt it will be, for me — it doesn’t seem to have the horsepower for serious development work, and that’s mainly what I’d want it for — but it could be very good for less demanding applications.
(I will point out that the laptops offered by the One Laptop Per Child project is designed to be much tougher. I wouldn’t give an Eee to a younger child, but that one might well be sufficient for them.)
The eepc is definitely inadaquate if you need horsepower for anything. I think the CPU is sub-1GHz. It’s great though for a cheap ultra-portable web-browsing/email/wordprocessing machine. A lot of people fit into that market.
Hmm, forgot to mention, the main weakness in my mind to an OLPC is simply that they aren’t readily available outside of the third world countries they’re meant for. Plus I think the EEEPC is closer to a mainstream PC feature-wise and perhaps interface-wise (though the OLPC has an innovative interface of course.) The OLPC though would be great if you were out in a log cabin somewhere though, it can be bicycle generator powered!
At that price, it sounds like a good machine for most people. 🙂 And yes, the OLPC isn’t normally readily available here, but for the next couple weeks (if you live in the US or Canada) you can buy them in pairs at the above website, one for you and one to donate to a child in one of those third-world countries.