Ask OLPC a Question about Distribution/Summary
Where or how can I get one?
Short answer: YOU CAN'T..
Medium answer: Given the characteristics of the project, the OLPC is initially available only to national government agencies—ie. Ministry of Education—allowing us to achieve the initial economy of scale and a sufficiently large impact to make it sustainable. There are plans and ideas on how to expand our market to include other smaller and/or distributed organizations that will cater to people, places and situations where government agencies are unavailable - in the future and most likely collaborating through and with other parties.
Trying to satisfy personal, individual or otherwise 'isolated' retail requests (many present in this section) will divert precious energy that would otherwise be more effective at larger scales and targets. This does not imply a lack of interest or sympathy towards these requests, many of which are at the heart of our mission, but rather a physical limit that has to do with trade-offs between wishful thinking and practical realities. By no means does this preclude or try to impede that private, NGO and other grass-root organizations or people lobby in their target countries to be included as recipients or to get involved—it just means that they'll have to be a little patient and not lose sight of their dreams and try to match it with our timings.
Keep alert, maybe in the near future there'll be news that will allow us to cater your special demand.
Future answer: YOU CAN, probably, almost. Quanta, the manufacturer of the OLPC laptop, may start selling $200 laptops in 2008 or so that resemble the OLPC laptop. See this.
Buy 2 Get 1
There's been quite a buzz going around this idea which is just plain wrong. There are no plans for such distribution scheme. See the Retail page for the full story on retail sales, and read this article broken temporal replacements: 20minutos.es (in spanish) guardian.co.uk (in english)
Will it be distributed in developed countries?
As mentioned in the countries section, the decision to distribute in any particular country (including the USA and other developed countries) does not depend on the OLPC but on the government's decision.
Note must be taken that developing countries are the initial and ultimate target countries for the OLPC, although it does not preclude other countries from participating.
Why not the USA?
See above. Or for further discussions on the subject see OLPC4USA and retail.
Can NGOs and charities get them?
Short answer: As with the individual (retail) availability, the answer is NO.
The OLPC efforts are currently focused at national level, and although we would love to make it available without restrictions, this would disrupt and overload our launch process in order to deal with the vast number of NGOs that are interested in participating. After the initial launch, plans include the opening up to include them. See here.
Who will get one?
As much as we would like to see an OLPC in the hands of every child on the planet, practical issues and humanitarian criteria help decide the first people to get laptops:
- Children and teachers in developing countries whose governmental leaders have partnered with OLPC
How are they going to be distributed?
Exclusively through national or government agencies of the countries involved. The OLPC is in no way involved in the actual (physical) distribution or the processes governing it—those are national prerogatives of the countries buying the laptops.