If you haven't heard about the One Laptop Per Child program, it's worth investigating.  This is a privately funded project, targeted toward providing laptops to children around the world.  The laptops themselves run on Linux, and are pretty much indestructible.  The giving program allows you to buy one, give one for $399.  Interesting.  I did a little nosing around to see which age group these are targeted at.  The answer I found was around 6-16, although the laptops are supposedly appropriate for any age group.  I'm not sure that they would be good for my kids (they're still a bit young, at ages 2 and 4), but it would be fascinating to see if they expressed interest.
 
Ivan Krstić, director of security and information architecture at the One Laptop per Child project, who also did a keynote at PyCon about this project (much of the software is written in Python), will be in Farmington Hills next Tuesday, November 13, for a public meeting with the Michigan Unix Users Group (MUG).  The meeting goes from 6:30-9:30, and is held at the Farmington Community Library, 32737 W. 12 Mile Rd., Farmington Hills, MI 48334-3302.

 And … rumor has it that he's bringing HARDWARE, which would be very cool to see.  It's a huge honor to have him attend this meeting considering that the public launch of the giving program is the day before the meeting, November 12.  I really hope that the library is packed.

Here's a link to a flyer for the event:

http://uploads.mitechie.com/mug/mug_20071113.pdf