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New England Patriots QB Tom Brady has announced he is teaming up with the One Laptop Per Child project and buying 1,500 of them to send to children in Uganda.  They will be shipped to his sister Nancy who works with the Infectious Diseases Institute there.

“One Laptop Per Child is an education-based charity located in Cambridge whose mission is to provide many of the world’s poorest children with their own computer,” No. 12 writes. “After meeting with the group, I committed to buying 1,500 laptops and sending them to my amazing sister who is doing a mission in Uganda right now and will hand deliver them to the kids she and I met last year.”

The $199 mini laptops, called XOs, have 7 inch screens that swivel and fold down, turning the laptop into a tablet, 3 USB ports, an SD slot, webcam, built in Wi-Fi, and are solar powered.  They run on Linux with a simple interface called Sugar, and have a 433-MHz AMD Geode CPU, 256MB of 166-MHz DDR333, and 1GB of flash memory.  They are clearly not cutting edge technology, but for kids who’ve probably never used a computer before in their lives, it’s enough.

Right now Amazon is offering a “Buy One Give One” promotion. For $399 you can buy an XO for yourself and give one to a poor child overseas.  Check out Amazon.com for more details.

Read [Boston Herald]