Coming Clean

Christmas Shopping: SMG or OLPC?

So I’m thinking about the “cool” present for this Christmas. What will it be?

Up until a few days ago, I was thinking I wanted to get my hands on Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. One of the cool things with SMG is that while it has a single player story mode, a second person can interact with the game at the same time – assisting or pestering as they so desire … that is until I decide to impale my wii-mote into their skull. Josh and I really enjoy playing games together, so I’m thinking this could be a real winner.

But now, I’m thinking about the OLPC laptop. The cool thing about buying an OLPC is that the commercial price is about that of a low-end laptop ($400) – but that price is actually purchasing 2 laptops: one for you, and one for some kid in the world that would otherwise have no chance of seeing a laptop. This strikes me as a very “in the Spirit” kind of gift … though really, to be really in the Spirit, I guess I’d buy two and give them both away.

But then I got to thinking that really, it would be cool to give my kids an OLPC, even though they are a bit young for it. Josh may actually be at a good starter age – that of 5. But then I think that it would be really hard for me to just let Josh play with the laptop – I’d be dying to mes with it myself. All the same, I think there is very good potential here.

Lisa just mentioned an idea (she saw my tip-tap-typing and loomed to see what I was doing). The kids REEEAAALLY like taking pictures and having their pictures taken. So Lisa was thinking about getting them some kid digital cameras. That would be a lot of fun, too. They’d never put them down, though, and we’d be eating batteries like never before.

So, anywho, that’s the ideas I have skating in my head for the Chastain Christmas. Anybody have any extra ideas, suggestions, thoughts?