RISC-V International's plan to give away 1,000 boards to developers seems like a good idea. I like some of the products I've seen but the cheap ones are just toys and the decent ones are way overpriced.
I never did deliver for the OLPC project, but I tested a lot of things other people were working on. I also finally grokked the free software idea and became and engineer instead of a history teacher.
The $250 or so of prototype hardware has been repaid in testing, bug reporting other things I was able to do then. It sits on a shelf in my office to remind me how I got started, and what it mean to really be a part of a community that takes risks to invest in newcomers.