OLPC - "eaten my homework"

[John Abreau]

Ben Scott wrote:

> 
>  Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, ten "books" of 200 pages
> each, and 500,000 copies of each.  That's a total of 1,000,000,000
> (one billion pages).  This is probably a big underestimate, but it
> gives me some numbers to work with.  Based on the price progression
> seen at http://www.nationalcolorcopy.com/ (first vendor found via
> Google that published prices), we can expect 0.005 (one-half cent) per
> page.  (I'd actually expect a better deal for a project of this
> magnitude, but I wanted to cite a source.)  That works out to $1 per
> book before binding.

So you're saying someone who is knowledgeable about actual textbook
production costs is wrong, because if you ignore the real-world
costs he pointed out, you can imagine something completely inadequate
for a cheaper price.

I looked at nationalcolorcopy.com, and I see no indication that they
produce anything as rugged as a textbook. Their low-cost manuals
probably resemble a cheap paperback, and would likely fall apart and rot
long before they reached their final recipients in the third world.


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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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