After reading Dan Weinreb's posting I ordered three OLPC XO notebooks. I've met Walter Bender some years ago through a licensing deal with MIT Media Lab. He is now heading the OLPC initiative. This is quite likely the most significant project since Tim Berners Lee's invention of the WWW.

Some nice features of the XO-1:

• Comes with source code for all applications and most of the operating system. There's even a View Source button on the keyboard that shows the code of what's running.
• Based on Linux, but application code is in Python
• 1200x900 7.5" diagonal LCD that works without backlight in bright daylight
• Wireless networking capable of mesh mode
• 2- or 5-cell LiFePO4 battery pack
• Built in color camera

Links:

• Review of the XO-1 by a 12 year old blogger
• Great technical info in the video of the talk at Google by Ivan Krstic, who is the architect of Bitfrost but talks about all aspects of the system