In the midst of the OLPC tax deduction discussion commentary, Aaron Peterson altered me to an interesting way to buy the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One XO laptop for $100: sell your HotSpot access.
Let's do $100 laptop math:
- Buy an XO laptop via G1G1 for $400
- Sell your T-Mobile HotSpot access code for $300
- Your XO laptop final price: $100
Repeat a few hundred times and you've made your bank for Christmas shopping and helped spread technology to children worldwide. In fact, I say that T-Mobile subscriptions will pop up on eBay in 3... 2..
Better yet, sell your XO laptop for $800 and purchase more G1G1 laptops with the extra cash. Lets be inspire to be more.
If you are in one of children sponsorship programs such as World Vision, please contact them about OLPC program. I did.
Below is my email to World Vision
Greetings World Vision,
I'm a sponsor for a child in through World Vision program.
Recently, I heard about OLPC project. This project aims to provide children in third world countries laptops to improve their education.
Those laptops are very easy to use, water-resistant, and no electricity infrastructure required. Currently, OLPC sale laptops to
individuals in US and Canada for $399. For each laptop OLPC sold, it will donate a laptop to third world countries like Cambodia, Nigeria
... The sale is from November 12nd until December 31th this year.
I'm very interested in this project. I'm planing to buy one laptop for my sponsored child and donate another to other children. I know that laptop would benefit the child's education tremendously. I believe there would be other sponsors interested in this program as well. If I participate in this project alone, the cost will be $399 for each laptop (I get one, and donate another one). However, if there is a coordinated effort to buy large quantities of laptops, the price would be cheaper. In addition, you can specify where the donated laptops to be sent.
According to http://laptopfoundation.org/participate/givemany.shtml
Give 100+
$299 per laptop
Give 1000+
$249 per laptop
Give 10,000+
$199 per laptop
In my opinion, World Vision could benefit tremendously by this program. World Vision is dedicated to working with children. OLPC is
aiming at children education through its laptop program. If both organizations co-operate in the same village, town ... the benefit will be in order of magnitude.
The laptop per child program can only reach its full potential when every child in the same class, school has one laptop. That's because those little laptops is design to communicate and transfer information
to each other.
If World Vision is willing to step up the effort and organizing the purchase in large quantities of those laptops so we can direct theses laptops to World Vision sponsored children. I'm very happy to participate.
Michael,
OLPC will not engage World Vision. See the experience another NGO had with them: http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/g1g1/us-vietnam_xo_laptop_purchase.html
Even if they did, I doubt World Vision would pay a penny over $200. Kinda hard for them to tell their sponsors they are re-gifting their money to another organization. And they would only buy a few dozen at most, at first, to pilot XO's till they could see results.
Wayan,
I read the linked article. I hope OLPC will hire more customer reps in the future.
I'm Vietnamese and I'm going to Vietnam this January 08 with my XO laptop. Do you know Bill Singer contact info?
Is there anyone from Europe who can confirm the price for forwarding the shipment? I get no answer from UPS. Though they were fast with the estimate form, I get no estimate from them..
Or you could donate the T-mobile to some charitable organization and take the tax deduction.
I read the resale and auction ideas for N. Americn fans and can begin to imagine the kinds of ways the XOs will move from intended audiences to other parts of the market within a target country.
"Hey (Miguel/Ali/Ravi/Sara) want to sell your little green machine?" and other more complex ploys...
I dunno (does anyone?) just how the T-Mobile offer is structured; won't it be tied at least by name to the person who bought (sorry, "donated twice the cost of" ;)) the XO?
If it's not, perhaps I will buy another ;)
timothy
Did the PIN numbers to start the HotSpot year get sent yet? I really could have used it over the long weekend stuck in airports.
"Did the PIN numbers to start the HotSpot year get sent yet? I really could have used it over the long weekend stuck in airports."
No, at least not to me. I don't have the email handy in front of me, but my memory is that either somewhere on the OLPC site or in the order-confirmation information, it said that information would arrived with the laptop.
(That makes me happy, because since I will theoretically be done with law school in six months, the longer past that the hotspot access continues, the better -- for right now, I have plentiful bandwidth :))
timothy
If there would be a good way to "donate" the "T-Mobile access codes", I'm quit sure there would be a lot of people that would do it, at least these ones that bought it from another country than USA and Canada. We know, that there a lot of people that bought from Germany http://olpc-deutschland.de/zum-Thema/so-bekommt-ihr-euren-xo-auch-in-deutschland
Any idea?
I could be wrong, but my guess is that T-Mobile would be rather unhappy with people reselling the access, and so if any significant number of people started doing it, they would changes things so it was no longer possible.
Will people selling their OLPC XO on Ebay include the T-Mobile access code, pocket it or resell it as another item? This is probably a good question for people to ask the seller if they plan on buying an OLPC XO on Ebay.
Wow! Smart idea. :)
Wow! Smart idea.