I have been fascinated by the work Nicholas Negroponte has done using computers in education ever since I got involved with putting PC's in classrooms at our kids elementary school (to date the project we were installing 8088 based PC's running DOS). His book Being Digital is the first book I read that foretold the implications of bits versus atoms, in many ways predicting the role of the Internet in our lives.
His latest passion has been to change education worldwide (and change the world in the process) with the One Laptop Per Child program. Their goal was to build a $100 laptop. They got close (closer than any other laptop at the time) with a $199 laptop. You really should listen to Nicholas talk about OLPC at the TED conference.
Last year they did a short promotion, called Give One, Get One where you could buy a OLPC laptop for $399 and in effect give one to some child in another country.
It's back this year with Amazon doing the fulfillment. I would encourage you to take a look at this unique laptop for any students you know, knowing that for a reasonable price you get a laptop and someone deserving gets a laptop. There's also an option to donate a laptop for $199, but the link appears to be broken at this time.