AMD cans low-cost PC project

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There's another side to this: First of all, one laptop per child is a misnomer. It's really one laptop per ad-hoc group, since if information access of the type available with such a device has economic value, you can bet that parents, siblings, neighbors, relatives, etc. will be negotiating for access to each machine, and most likely successfully. There are 24 hours in a day, and more than one person can make use of the box over that time. So the argument that buying a million of them for a country with 80 million kids will have a minor effect is out of touch with the reality of the social fabric of the third world.

Also, the argument that no one would pay 40% of their annual income is both valid and invalid. It is valid in the sense that it would be very unlikely that any but a highly entrepreneurial person (or group - see above) would make such an investment in the face of the immediate stresses of dramatic poverty. But it is also invalid in that this is not how OLPC is being sold. It is being sold to governments of these countries, on the same basis that harvesters and plows and fuel is being sold -- as an infrastructure investment that will bear fruit (productivity, goods, and ultimately prosperity and tax revenues) at a greater yield level than other infrastructure investments. The machines are to be given to the students and their surrounding clusters to seed that prosperity. The fact that the overtures of Negroponte are rebuffed by one or another no-vision government bureaucrat does not intrinsically invalidate the positioning, nor foretell the future of the initiative. It could work. It might not. Time will tell.; Posted by: gsteele531@... Posted on: 11/15/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use