XO sold through Amazon this year...Who cares?

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program will begin selling its XO laptop via Amazon this year in a reprise of its Give One Get One (G1G1) program, according to Ars Technica and several other outlets. Although the Ars piece paints this a real boon for OLPC, whose G1G1 program last year saw distribution problems of comic proportions, I have to ask, who cares?

Dell's new Inspiron Mini can be had for $349 and, while it lacks some of the cool features of the XO, blows the XO away in terms of performance. Sure, my $399 to Amazon gives a child in a developing country a laptop, but a donation of the $50 I save to Doctors Without Borders or Action Against Hunger would get children a heck of a lot of food and medicine.

Is the ebook reader in the XO really cool and innovative? Yes, of course it is. Is mesh networking a good idea (at least in theory) for helping kids collaborate? Definitely. Is the XO really durable? Yessireebob (but good luck getting replacement parts or warranty service if it does break). But what does the average consumer want? A cheap, durable netbook that they (or their kids) can toss in a backpack and use to get online anywhere there's WiFi.

Quite frankly, the crumbling OLPC organization doesn't inspire much confidence that my extra $200 will get an XO to a developing country anyway. I'm the first to give OLPC its due for creating the entire netbook market. However, that market is becoming extremely competitive with solid products emerging for both developed and developing countries. I, for one, will take an Inspiron Mini for Christmas this year, pilot new touch-capable Classmates in my schools next year, and make donations to organizations with a bit more credibility (and a clearer, cleaner mission) than OLPC.