One Laptop per Child to Cost $150 – Analysis

OLPC Gets Higher Price, Faces More Critics

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 12/07/2006 | 04:12 PM ]

<%BANNER[article_nw]%>

When some computer industry executives heard about a plan to build a $100 laptop for the developing world’s children, they generally ridiculed the idea, considering the cost of screen alone at around $100. Moreover, Intel’s Craig Barrett called the potential device “a gadget” rather than a personal computer (PC). Now that the $100 laptop seems to have got the shape, it also have got a price and it may be not exactly $100.

The decrease prime cost allowed One Laptop Per Child initiative to win over many skeptics over the last two and a half years. The New York Times writes that five countries - Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand – have made tentative commitments to put the computers into the hands of millions of students, with production in Taiwan expected to begin by mid-2007.

“The laptop does not come with a Microsoft Windows operating system or even a hard drive, and the screen is small. And the cost is now closer to $150 than $100. But the price tag, even compared with low-end $500 laptops now widely available, transforms the economic equation for developing countries,” reports The New York Times.

That has not prevented the effort, conceived by Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher, from becoming the focal point of a debate over the value of computers to both learning and economic development.

“The detractors include two computer industry giants, Intel and Microsoft, pushing alternative approaches. Intel has developed a $400 laptop aimed at schools as well as an education program that focuses on teachers instead of students. And Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is ‘just taking what we do in the rich world’ and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too,” continues the article.

• The New York Times: For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate.