Mary Lou Jespen, the XO Laptop designer and OLPC’s CTO before leaving to found Pixel Qi, has grand ambitions for her mythical $75 laptop. The company is working on a laptop that will be able to run on for 20 to 40 hours on a single battery charge. Sounds like magic, but they assure us it is just old fashioned science.

The laptop will boast incredible efficiency, thanks to an LCD that can switch to a monochrome view to conserve energy. She offers no concrete details other than that regarding the innovation but we should be on the lookout when they drop sometime during the second half of next year.

The Amazon OLPC XO Give 1-Get 1 laptop program is now live. Here’s how it works: For $399 you get one OLPC XO laptop sent to you and another one is sent to a child in the developing world. Quite the novel concept. This deal has been going on since last year in certain areas but Amazon really gives it the mass-market push it deserves.

For you stingy types, Amazon also allows you to buy just one OLPC XO for $199.