Everyone wins from the decision of the organisation behind the admirable One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme to let consumers in the US buy one of its machines - designed to bridge the digital divide in poor countries - as long as they also buy one for a deprived child. OLPC, the best known of a number of projects to get cheap computers and mobiles to developing countries, eventually hopes to sell them for $100 each when production runs are large enough. For a limited period American consumers can buy two for $188 each as long as one goes to an impoverished child. This not only plugs what hopefully will prove a temporary shortfall in orders from governments of developing countries, but also meets a genuine demand from early adopters in the US to get their hands on a gizmo that might command a premium price anyway. It fulfils a basic human need to do something for a good cause - with the added kudos that anyone who sees a buyer in the US with one of these mean machines will know they have given to charity without having to say so. The OLPC is a good example of what CK Prahalad argued in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: that the best way to help the very poorest - the four billion people living on $2 or less a day - is to treat them as potential entrepreneurs and customers rather than just recipients of aid. Maybe the OLPC's selling technique could be applied elsewhere. What about one drug for poor countries for every proprietary one you buy?