Get A Rugged Laptop Now And Give One To Children In Need
Due to the fact that the orders of XO-1 rugged laptop (the OLPC project, remember?) were poor, Nicholas Negroponte, head of M.I.T. Media Lab announced a promotion that will be starting November 12th, what they called Get One, Give One (G1G1). For a limited time you can purchase 2 such laptops for only $399, one of these laptops will be shipped to you, the seller, while the second one will be shipped to a child in need.
I find it to be a nice initiative, only I don’t know how well will catch this to the public. Other people wrote about this here and here and it will be nice if this will start a big movement so everybody buy such computers during this promotional offer period.
The offer is targeted to people in US and Canada. Thus a question appears: what will people in US and Canada do with these laptops? Maybe donate them to schools or what? The market of this laptop is clearly the 3rd world so such an offer targeted to rich countries may not be the best idea. We’ll wait and see…
Anyway, good luck!
Later edit: I have also observed that ruggednotebooks.com features a post on this offer to get one give one. I come to thinking more and more that this project is a bit disoriented from a marketing point of view. Guys, do you know where you’re going or what?
September 28th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Of course we do. OLPC initiative and design is a good indication of where we think the market is going.
In fact, I have posted on this often, and if you know anything about the little laptop, it is considered to be “ruggedized”. It is shock proof, water and dust resistant. It also has an SSD.
All features of rugged notebooks. If it’s for kids in third world countries, it needs to be rugged.
September 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I read that part of the problem is that several verbal government orders for the OLPC have not been backed up with money, checks, or other securities.
Thus, they are doing this promotion to create some cash flow and interest up front. The promotion is only for a two week period.