One Laptop Per Child – My XO Laptop

I did something out of the ordinary this Christmas. I bought an “XO” laptop for a child in a third world country. I also bought an XO laptop for myself, so I can develop software designed to be distributed to the 1 million+ XO laptops out there in the third world.

The laptop runs a Linux operating system, with an special interface programmed almost exclusively in Python. Most apps, called ‘activities’, run as python programs. This is ideal for me, as I enjoy hacking around in python, and Linux is – of course – very familiar to me.

I hope to use the laptop to contribute to health informatics applications that allow the laptop to be used in hospitals where there are no existing comparable health systems. If you wish to get involved in this project and give something back, here in the UK you can now order your own laptop from Amazon.co.uk.