XO laptops make a worldwide splash

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They are the laptop computers that almost everyone has heard of, but few have seen.But thanks to a successful Give One, Get One promotion, that is changing.The laptops, which go by the name XO, are better known for the intention of the makers: One Laptop Per Child. They have been featured on CBS' "60 Minutes" and PBS' "The Newshour."The computer was designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab and is being built in China for One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit organization that wants to put a laptop into the hands of every child in the developing world.To jump-start the program, One Laptop Per Child decided to raise money by selling the machines in the United States and Canada for $400, with half of that money going toward providing free laptops for children in other countries. It was known as Give One, Get One and it caused a sensation.The organization raised "several tens of millions of dollars" during the course of the program which ran from Nov. 12 until Dec. 31, according to spokeswoman Jackie Lustig. More than 100,000 laptops will be sent to consumers.Lustig said there were no plans to sell directly to the public again because of Internal Revenue Service regulations. After a while, she said, "It starts to look like a commercial endeavor."According to the OLPC Web site (www.laptop.org), the Give One, Get One program made it possible to launch programs in Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia and Afghanistan.The computer also is finding its way into schools in the United States.Early last month the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., signed a commitment to purchase 15,000 of the laptops to be used by students in first through eighth grades.The laptops are due to be delivered by April 1.Lustig said it was possible to distribute the machines to school districts or states "if people come together" and decide that is what they want to do, but it is not a product for the consumer market.While One Laptop may not be a commercial endeavor, eBay is. Some of the people who ordered the laptops are reselling them via eBay, where they could get more than they paid for them. Some have taken out the one-year subscription to T-Mobile Hotspots that comes with the machine before reselling the computer."It's unfortunate that people are trying to profit from a charitable giving venture," Lustig said.During the course of four days of carrying the two test laptops around Pittsburgh, they generated their own buzz.E. Bruce Goldstein, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the laptop was "pretty cool," but cautioned that teachers in the Third World who were working with the laptops in their classrooms would find out what every college professor in the United States already knows: "What it does is give the students a displacement activity so they don't need to pay attention to the lectures."Though he found the keyboard small for his adult hands, he said it still was possible to type and play with some of the functions, such as paint and accessing the Internet."They're cute, that's for sure," Karol Paltsios, a marketing consultant who played with one for a few minutes in Pittsburgh. "I love the design."Then, when she couldn't get the chat function to work with a nearby XO, she said, "If we were 10 years old we'd have it in no time." In fact, a first-grader loved the chat function that linked one XO to the other.Although the two laptops were virtually identical, they displayed their own quirks. One had a much more powerful antenna, so it was easier to access the Internet.The XO runs Linux, which means that all of the programs on the laptop are shareware. The software may not be familiar to Windows or Apple users, but it's easy to learn. The hardest part of the laptop was figuring out how to open it -- and how to get it away from eager users.The laptops are no longer available to U.S. consumers. But, to donate a $200 XO laptop go to www.laptop.org. E-mail Ann Belser at abelser(at)post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)