For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate

[Christopher Browne]

On 11/30/06, Rick Tomaschuk <rickl-ZACYGPecefkm4kRHVhTciCwD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I'm not anti $100 er $150....er $250....??? $350 laptop for developing
> countries.

You evidently had me fooled.

> Education is important especially to stop disease, promote
> healthy lifestyles. It seems to me to be a strange debate. We're going
> to give 21st century technology to countries still in the 19th century??

Why should donors feel obliged to spend *MORE* in order to push
elderly/inferior technology to recipients?

By the time you make an old 486 system usable, in Africa, you'll have
spent *easily* as much on preparation and handling as an OLPC would
have cost.

And the 486 will be *enormously* more expensive and difficult to
deploy reliably than the OLPC.  After all, the 486 has a power supply
consuming on the order of 50 times as much power as the OLPC, which
ignores the need to ship (and power) even more fragile monitors.  And
"oops," the 486 boxes will fall over every time there's a power
outage.  (Which happens frequently in such places.)
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