UK can 'Give one, Get one' for Christmas

One Laptop per Child's 'Give One, Get One' scheme looks set to launch in the UK in December.

According to a listing on Amazon.co.uk on Tuesday, people will be able to buy an XO laptop via the scheme on 16 December. Before then, they can place pre-orders on the website. The laptops will cost £275 under the G1G1 scheme.

Customers buying the OLPC computer through the Amazon.co.uk site will find they have to pay a charge of £50 for postage and packing. A spokesperson for Amazon told ZDNet UK this charge was not the responsibility of Amazon but was set by OLPC.

"This is a transaction which is solely the responsibility of the merchant, and the merchant fixes the price and conditions," the spokesperson said.

With each order placed under G1G1, one XO laptop is sent to the customer and another is sent to a child in a developing country. The scheme has just been revived in the US, where it ran for a period last year. In the US, Amazon.com started selling XO notebooks under the scheme on Monday for $399, with a free shipping option.

The OLPC XO is a fully functioning laptop, and on the Amazon UK listing, it is described as coming with 1GB Nand Flash, a Linux-based OS and 256 DDR RAM memory.

On Thursday last week, the founder and chairman of the OLPC project, Nicholas Negroponte, said that the XO version on sale via Amazon would not have the dual-boot facility that allows the laptop to run either Microsoft Windows or the OLPC's open-source Sugar operating system. "Microsoft is making that version for the developing world only," Negroponte said.

Original article: OLPC 'Give One, Get One' set to launch in UK from ZDNet UK