$100 Laptops Go For Premium On eBay
By Christopher Nickson
December 28, 2007
Not $100, not even $425, but people are willing to spend up to $600 for the laptop.
It’s not a move the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group could have predicted. Their aim is to provide their distinctive XO computers to children in countries where they’d never normally see a computer. Although called the $100 laptop – its aim as to costs – the XO costs $188 to make. But in the US, machines are selling on eBay for up to $600, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News.
OLPC does make the computers available for sale in the US through its Give One, Get One campaign, under which buyers purchase a computer for $225 and agree to donate a further $200 to finance another unit.
However, the laptops have been cropping up on auction site eBay, generally selling for more than $250 and up to $600.
Certainly it’s a novelty, but so far only about 100 XOs have appeared for auction