OLPC support for small-scale projects goes ad hoc

As I mentioned earlier, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation is cutting off it's short-lived support for 100- to 1,000-computer projects in schools (otherwise known as pilots). It appears that the reason for this change is either OLPC people are way too busy to fulfill small orders or those small orders never lead to anything bigger (h/t to Wayan at OLPC News): 

"This is a program we would love to support if we had time to do everything — it has produced some lovely stories, and on rare occasions starts a process that leads to larger, lasting commitments."--SJ

Educators and others interested in small-scale purchases of OLPC's Children's Machine XO are advised to: 

• Buy one or two on eBay
• Submit a proposal to the
• Contributors Program, was started to support developers
• Post a request to the XO Exchange Registry,
• which re-cycles machines from the Contributors Program

Or as SJ says further on in the post, load the open-source Sugar operating system on a bunch of other low-cost machines. (Like, an Intel Classmate?)

The name of the cancelled program supporting small-scale projects? "Change the World." Or, I guess, don't bother.