The True Cost of One Laptop Per Child

An anonymous reader writes "The '$100 laptop' Negroponte is hoping to put in the hands of millions of kids in developing nations may actually be more like the '$900 laptop.' From the article, 'Jon Camfield says...once maintenance, training, Internet connectivity, and other factors are taken into account, the actual cost of each laptop rises to more than $970. This, he says, doesn't even take in to account the additional costs associated with theft, loss, or accidental damage. Camfield contends that such an expensive undertaking should at least be field-tested in pilot programs designed to establish the viability of the project before asking countries to invest millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars.'" Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

Nice to know

[Anonymous Coward]

That this sort of trite is more important than the life of one of the actual innovators of this program. Shame on you slashdot. Though, sadly, I'm not surprised.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=196602670

Re:A lot of people are assholes

[NineNine]

Actually, I'm enjoying watching it fail because the guy doing it is a PR whore, pure and simple. It's an impossible thing to accomplish (you can't even get an MP3 player for $100), and it's goals are questionable. The only person benefitting is the guy who is trying to get this thing going (Nicholas Negroponte). There's really nothing admirable about this project, and I think that Nicholas Negroponte should get drummed out of MIT for this asinine project.