One Laptop Per Child pledge

Fred puissante at lrc.puissante.com
Fri May 26 22:02:01 EDT 2006


On Thursday 25 May 2006 21:04, Paul Lussier uttered thusly:
...
> > Yep.  Getting computers to people in third world countries.
>
> Right.  Benson, crazy though he is, was foolish enough to think we
> should take care of people in our country before helping other
> countries people who can't read and write.  That whole "Charity begins
> at home" thing is just so, well, un-PC :)

Hey, didn't that used to be PC at some point in the past?

;-)

Anyway, just to add my own $0.02, I don't see the $100 PC making much f a 
difference -- unless it can connect to the Internet. Otherwise the "third 
world" will be limited to whatever content and software their respective 
governments will allow to be installed on those PCs.

Oh, and unless these PCs can be run with a hand crank or solar cells, still 
pretty useless in many parts of the world. And with the typical power 
consumption of laptop CPUs, that's a lot of hand cranking. And I don't see 
how you can keep the costs down to $100 if you have to include solar cells.

Methinks someone has a pipe dream. I can just see it now. All of these 
villagers are given these PCs, which are dead after the first hour or two of 
use. But hey, I'm sure they'll find novel uses for dead PCs.

-Fred



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