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12 November 2008, 16:44

OLPC notebook coming to Europe

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Starting on 17 November, the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) will be selling its XO-1 notebook through Amazon in the USA and, for the first time, in Europe as well. This was announced by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at the World of Health IT Conference in Copenhagen. Amazon customers will be able to join in the "Give One Get One" campaign this Christmas by paying for two machines and giving one to a child in the developing world.

Independent news blog OLPC News says the campaign will be running in all the Member States of the EU as well as Russia, Turkey and Switzerland. No UK pricing has been announced, but in the USA buying two laptops is likely to cost around $400. Customers in the USA and Canada were able to join in the "Give One Get One" project for the first time in November and December 2007, via the OLPC project home page, which claims already to have sold approximately 188,000 XO-1 machines.

The aim is to give portable computers to children in developing countries. The XO-1 notebook is being marketed in the normal way to governments and organizations associated with them in such countries, which can order them from the initiative for their schoolchildren. Uruguay, Peru, Columbia and Ghana are among the countries participating in the OLPC project. Private individuals can't buy an XO-1 other than through the "Give One Get One" campaign, but demand has been strong since the first OLPC presentation in 2005. The campaign seems to have inspired any number of notebook manufacturers to produce inexpensive mini-notebooks, which have been entering the market as "netbooks" since late 2007.

(djwm)

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