I STILL want a $100 laptop, even at $300

So it turns out that, contrary to what some people were saying at the Consumer Electronics Show, we won't be able to buy that $100 one-laptop-per-child laptop after all.

Or maybe we will. As I pointed out many months ago, making these machines unavailable to the general public is simply a bad idea, a guarantee that they'll be stolen from or resold by kids. Back then, OLPC's position was absolutely not, no, never, no way. Sixteen months later, they publicly say they're "looking at the possibility." That's progress. One should never underestimate how hard it is to crank the bureaucratic mind around to face reality.

Look, these machines (now dubbed the XO) are neat. They're cute, colorful, rugged, and even at $300 each or more they'd be an inexpensive and very welcome addition to any long car trip with kids. Selling them to the general public would be a great way to raise extra money for the project, raise awareness of the project and generally feed the OLPC/XO machinery.

(As for the benighted souls who are outraged that some people would get a lower price, two words: "sliding scale." Americans give away lots of goods and services at below market price, based on the recipient's income and other factors. Choosing what you want to charge is something you can do in a free market. Great system. Try it sometime.)

As I said back in 2005, Trevor Baylis got it right. He's the British inventor who designed the hand-cranked power source that's now in radios, flashlights and other devices you can buy off the shelf at your local discount store. Baylis invented it to use with a radio for poor people who couldn't afford the cost of batteries in Africa. But he understood that campers, survivalists and gadget freaks would like it too -- and they'd be willing to pay.

Now all we have to do is get OLTP to stop "looking at the possibility" and start shipping those XO laptops -- both to the kids they're designed for and to the rest of us.