The One Laptop Per Child program is trying to live up to its name. OLPC has a deal with Yoko Ono to use John Lennon’s likeness in order to promote the purchase of these laptops for every child. There is a new commercial that OLPC will run using a John Lennon sort-of-sound-alike together with some video footage from an interview that has been altered to match the video to the audio.

The message is simple — empower children everywhere with knowledge using laptops. Personally, I think if Lennon were still alive, he probably would promote something like this. The ads will run on CBS, Time Warner, and Fox networks. These companies donated the commercial time to the OLPC program. You can see the video after the break.

Via [Geeksugar]Help [OLPC]

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. Continued after the break.

Just a few months back, we saw Peru become the first country in the world to begin a Windows XP based XO laptop pilot program, and now Columbia will be joining them. The announcement, which comes courtesy of Microsoft, is calling for the program to initially take place in Quetame and Chia, but will also more »

Despite some earlier reports that Amazon would begin sales of the next XO laptop Give One Get One program on November 1, it looks like that date was off by a few weeks. The latest information, along with confirmation from the OLPC foundation is that sales will begin on November 17. That’s a bit longer to wait than we originally expected, but on the bright side that just gives us a little longer to put some money aside.

The One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC), Microsoft, and Peru’s Education Minister José Antonio Chang Escobedo have recently announced that Peru will be the first in the world to get Windows XP-based XO Laptops.

The new laptops will be part of a nine-month pilot that is intended to “integrate educational software, low-cost computing, and technology training into classrooms throughout Peru.” The XO Laptops will be made available to the students 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, and will (as previously mentioned) be running Windows XP Pro. In addition, they will also feature the Student Innovation Suite which includes programs such as Office 2003 Standard and Learning Essentials 1.0.

While the pilot has been designated for nine-months, there has not been any mention of when it will begin, or how many of the XO Laptops will be made available for the students. As of now, this is the first and only XP-based XO announcement, and if you remember the laptops that will be available in the upcoming Give One Get One program will remain with just the original Sugar Linux installed.

Keep reading to check out the full press release…

After the recent popularity of the initial news that the ‘Give One Get One’ program would be returning this November with sales being handled through Amazon, the OLPC’s Product Manager Kim Quirk posted a message on wiki.laptop.org further confirming the news, but also added an extra detail that will possibly disappoint some that were a more »

It turns out the earlier reports were indeed accurate, and the ‘Give One Get One’ program will be making a return later this year, and it will be handled by none other than Amazon.com.

This information comes courtesy of Matt Keller who is the director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at OLPC and he has confirmed that Amazon will begin selling the XO laptop in late November with sales running through the end of December. Keller also went on to clarify their reasoning behind Amazon handling the sales, stating that they are just “a small group of people,” which hopefully will put an end to the shipping issue complaints that we saw last year.

Windows XP coming to the OLPC XO Laptop certainly comes as little surprise, its been hinted at, and even shown off in the past, but what does come as news is that it should be available by this September. Microsoft has recently released a version of Windows XP to manufacturing and according to James Utzschneider, more »

During the “Give 1 Get 1″ sale for the OLPC XO laptop, T-Mobile had been offering a free year of T-Mobile Hotspot access with any G1G1 purchase. Well, it seems that there was a time limit on just when you could activate your account and begin your free year of service and today, June 30 more »

While the original XO Laptop in green is nice enough looking, there is always something that makes it sound special when its labeled as a limited edition. In this case the latest limited edition is a red model of the XO Laptop. There are reported to only be 100 of these special models made and they are all slated for the developers that are working on the dual boot Windows XP and Sugar Linux systems.

Aside from the red coloring, the models also offer 2GB of flash memory, which is the minimum required for Windows XP to run. No plans have been announced for a future release of this coloring, so chances are you will never see one in the wild, that is unless a developer goes against the path and decides to drop theirs on eBay, but I would not count on that happening. Keep reading to check out a few more images of the red XO…