What is it with the $399 price point! Every new piece of tech seems to be selling for $399 now. It's getting to be a little annoying, frankly. It makes me think I can actually afford all this stuff. Is there magic in $399?

First the iPhone drops it's price to $399, making a lot of people angry that they bought at $599, but also making a lot of people happy that the price was now in their sweet spot. Does Apple know that $399 is some magical number of affordability?

Then the Eee PC comes out, also $399. Who wouldn't want a pretty powerful, ultra compact computer for only $399!

What's next but the much lauded XO Laptop, technically $199 but you can buy one and send a laptop to a child in need for only, wait for it, $399!

The latest piece of technology to enter the $399 fray? Amazon.com's Kindle! It's only a book reader and the books cost $10, but the device is only $399. How could you go wrong?

So what is it about $399? Is it a special number wired into our heads? The minute we see it, we need to buy whatever it is that's $399? Is this some calculated fraction of Household Income spit out by some formula as a perfect price between making something "worth it" and making it "affordable"?

If you ask me, the $399 price point is getting a little crowded. How many of these devices do you want?

Amy and I decided to order an XO Laptop from the Give 1, Get 1 program. I'm kind of excited about it, just from a geek point of view. I also like that it's super rugged and I won't feel weird about having Kelly bang on it like I am with our other laptops. She really loves playing with the computers and if I can have a computer where she can use jacksonpollock.org without the need to really be supervised, then I'm all for it. Plus it's a ton of geek cred if she learns how to use the computer before age 2.

Another reason we got it is to help out with the OLPC program. I'm a firm believer that this program could really change things in countries where it's deployed and I think putting in Windows machines in these types of places could really hurt these kids' computer development education. These laptops remind me of older machines, like the Commodore 64s that I grew up on. They're completely open and available for programming and sharing. You just don't get that with today's focus on DRM and secure computing. And if these things can replace physical textbooks in these areas, the cost savings alone would be huge.

I also think, the more I've heard about it, that the OS on these things is revolutionary. Every program on the laptop has the source available to be hacked. You just push a button and an editor comes up that lets you code and test in real time. This is the kind of thing on the C= 64 that really got me into programming at such a young age. I'm really interested in trying it out myself. Mess it all up? Everything is version controlled, so you can just roll it back with no problems. Write a cool program you want to share? Anyone with an XO laptop can just download it and muck with it too. This is teaching real computer skills and not just how to sit in a box and use a computer's programs but really how to use the computer.

So that's why I'm getting one. How about you?

BTW, most of the people in this video have no idea what they're talking about. It actually is waterproof.

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