Actually, the OLPC project is going to be selling the laptops to US families, with a catch, starting November 10, 2007.

By the way, as an update, the current cost of the “$100″ laptop is around $188.

Anyways, as of November 10th, 2007, the OLPC project is offering 2 laptops to US buyers for ~$400, the catch being that you keep one, and the other is sent to a needy child in a poor country.

They are essentially attempting to subsidize a laptop for a kid from a poor country, by allowing people in the US to buy one for themselves (or their child).

Some claim that they have been reluctant in the past, for fear that people who used them would complain on the internet about the poor specs (compared to a retail computer), and give them a bad rep, which would turn other people (read: developing country governments) away from wanting to purchase them.

Even in the United States, schools that have distributed computers to children are now rethinking the idea, as it hasnt improved any of their overall test scores, mainly because, as some people note, just giving a kid a laptop does not make him a programmer, or give him the ability to properly use the computer for research and learning.