Why you people sip on your capaccinos and think how great it would be for these poor kids to get a laptop, oh what wonderful things we could accomplish in this world, I am thinking realistically. Maybe its just my corporate business sense kicking in. So chastise me for having an opinion that differs. Farhad seems to be on the right track.

I thought surely someone has more insight than myself into this so I did a quick google search and found this among other things:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2227850,00.asp

"This machine, which is the brainchild of onetime MIT media lab honcho Nick Negroponte, will save the world. His vision is to supply every child with what amounts to an advertising delivery mechanism. Hence the boys at Google are big investors.

Before you cheer for the good guys, ponder a few of these facts taken from a world hunger Web site. In the Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty." Every year, 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Since you've entered this site, at least 200 people have died of starvation. One in 12 people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. Nearly one in four people, or 1.3 billion—a majority of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. Let's include Negroponte and the Google billionaires.

So what to do? Let's give these kids these little green computers. That will do it! That will solve the poverty problem and everything else, for that matter. Does anyone but me see this as an insulting "let them eat cake" sort of message to the world's poor?

"Sir, our village has no water!" "Jenkins, get these people some glassware!"

But, wait. Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?

Of course, it might be a problem if there is no classroom and he can't read. The literacy rate in Niger is 13 percent, for example. Hey, give them a computer! And even if someone can read, how many Web sites and wikis are written in SiSwati or isiZulu? Feh. These are just details to ignore."

It's hard for me to believe that anyone would trashtalk this fantastic project. It has the potential to fundamentally change people's lives. From what I understand, the program includes providing wireless internet access with the laptops, and their mesh network allows them to transfer data via other laptops even if they are out of direct range.

For those who want to have one, or contribute, there is a "Give One, Get One" promotion happening until the end of this month, in which you buy two and donate one or both. All of this is being done not for profit.

The laptop uses a Linux operating system with lots of useful software built in. That's another thing that is great, it's entirely open source, so their development is open-ended and expandable.

And what has been happening so far with these machines, apparently, is that kids with no prior access to computers are taking to them like fish to water within minutes, and suddenly have an entire Internet-full of knowledge at their fingertips. That can completely change their lives -- and imagine what might start happening when these groups of kids start collaborating together.

For those who want to understand the philosophy of the project, I've just submitted a video of Nicholas Negroponte introducing the OLPC project at TED Talks. He is the founder of the project, and former chairman of the MIT Media Lab.