Geeky Charitable Presents

For quite a while there's been a group who've been trying to develop a laptop computer that would cost $100 (or less), that would be built for children, and that could be used in developing countries. They're called the One Laptop Per Child group. And they've almost succeeded, except that the laptop costs $188, but that's still pretty cheap.

Anyway, for a limited time only, you can buy one of these laptops. Actually, you can't buy one of these laptops. You can buy two, of which you get one, and a child in a developing country gets the other, for $400. So it's fairly charitable, but $400 isn't bad for a laptop.



And they are very kiddy friendly - they don't have a hard disk, just quite a lot of RAM - that's because hard disks break when you drop them and use a lot of power, which isn't any use if you don't have a reliable power supply. They have a clever screen that you can still see in full sunlight, handy if you don't have a classroom. They have wireless internet, and if there's another in range, they automatically detect each other so that kiddies can chat and browse the web together and stuff like that.

But they're fairly geek friendly too. They run a version of Fedora Linux, and have some software that comes with them (including versions of things like FireFox and Opera), games, chat and stuff like that. And for when your little geeklet gets more advanced, it's got a Flash programming language, Python, and stuff like that.

It's so exciting, I want to buy one for me. So that's what the boys are getting for Christmas. Don't tell them though.

Here's a video of one of the laptops controlling a Roomba, over the web.