Our Christmas gift

The Girl and I have decided on what our Christmas gift to each other is going to be.

We're getting a new laptop for ourselves.

The One Laptop Per Child association has been working for year to produce the mythical $100 laptop that would be cheap enough that less affluent nations to buy them in massive bulk and give them to their children to connect to each other and to the world wide web, opening their learning opportunities exponentially. At the same time, the laptop would have to be durable, waterproof, dustproof, drop-proof, and user friendly in any language.

The $100 barrier appears to have been impossible to cross, but they have managed the break the $200 barrier - if just barely - while offering people a chance to help the project along. For $399, you get a laptop and give one to a child in one of those less affluent nations.

The giving's nice and all, but we're kind of looking forward to using the laptop itself. It's far from the fancy schmancy computers that we're pretty used to, but it should be an awesome travel computer as it's got wifi capability and a battery with eight hours of life. Plus it's got pretty cool, already installed software and a lot more that is open source and available through their wiki.

Check 'em out, but be quick, because the initial rollout of the get one, give one program is only available through November 26th.

If you need to check a review of somebody who's already gotten one, head to their review section.

I particularly enjoyed the review from a twelve-year old.