Third World — Today Microsoft and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) joined forces to help give a new boost to the once neglected project. Microsoft has signed on to provide Windows for the nick-named “$100 Laptops” which OLPC produces and actually cost closer to $200 at the moment. Typical Microsoft marketing.
The goal of the project is to provide laptops to poor children in developing countries who would otherwise not be able to obtain this kind of technology. If the OLPC is successful, children around the world would have a whole new realm of possibilities available to them. It’s as if Harry Potter just burst out of your mud-hut like a car bomb and handed you a laptop.
Early assessments of the project have listed a multitude of uses for the laptops in these countries, including:
1. Children could look at food on the laptop and imagine what it would be like if they were not starving. This would give starving children more of a reason to hate the United States which is fundamental to their culture.
2. Villages could break down the laptops and attempt to eat them. This would be a good deal for them considering they can no longer afford rice.
3. Poor families could sell their $100 laptop for $100 and use it to buy tickets out of their developing countries. Charity well spent.
All of these options and a great deal more, suddenly spring to life when you provide poor and starving children in developing countries with laptops. However it has been confirmed that consumption of the laptop will lead to a painful death.
Regardless of how the machines are put to use, this new partnership could help bolster the sales of OLPC to poverty stricken countries and cause a major stir in the industry of cheap, moderately unimportant technology.
“It’s really a big deal. These kids need to get a taste of what it’s like to not be them. What it’s like to live in a country where we can sit in front of a screen for days on end and read celebrity fashion news. How will they ever become civilized and not starving if they can’t even operate Microsoft Excel or download pirated music?” said OLPC marketing director, Billy “The Undercutter” Rodriguez.
Currently about 600,000 units of the OLPC laptop have been sold around the world and with the new addition of Windows that number should see a rise! In fact, with Windows now onboard the uneasy alliance that OLPC used to share with Intel should ease and production of the $100 Laptop should gain a lot of footing in its isolated market.
“We expect to sell a ton of these $100 Laptops.” said OLPC sales director, Mark Lauery at a press conference on Monday. “The laptop doesn’t have a great life expectancy in humid, dirty, weather-beaten regions where exposure to the elements is frequent. I mean, we’re going to be replacing these things every freaking month!”
OLPC is looking forward to a bright and productive future and for good reason. With the majority of the world being occupied by poor, hungry and uneducated people just taking up space, nothing says good business like selling laptops to their misguided governments! OLPC may have just hit the jackpot!