OLPC Available to the Public Early 2008

Zoxed writes "The BBC is reporting that the OLPC will be available to the public early next year on a buy-2-get-1 basis through eBay. With its cheap price, fully open spec. and full/open hardware support for Linux, expandability, 2W rating and LinuxBIOS booting it sounds like an embedded-Linux hackers favorite new toy."

Comments

Good present for grandparents as well?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Hmm- anybody know if the cutdown version will still run OpenOffice? If so, it'd make a damn good present for the retired person as well- a machine that will do e-mail, basic word processing, and web surfing, all in a handy little package that includes three USB ports and an SD slot.

Couple Thoughts: Case Color and Good Idea..

[nweaver]

a: Its about time. Everyone has been clamoring for this, because there are some real interesting industrial & cool uses this could be used for. Between the daylight screen and highly rugged design, this has the potential to be very interesting. I'd be tempted to pick one up for $300 to play with myself...

b: You can stop the reselling problem (one worry is always that by selling them you'd create an adult market and therefore encourage theft) by a simple expedient: a different color case. Make purchased OLPCs black, and kid ones in cheerful old-school iMac colors, and now they are vastly different products from a retail viewpoint.