On 6/11/06, Robert Citek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jun 10, 2006, at 10:39 AM, Carl Walther wrote: > > My understanding is that they will only be sold in very large > > quanities. One report I read said one million units. They are for > > third world countries, not for US consumption. > > Makes me wonder if the biggest obstacle for the OLPC is not > technological but rather political. In a word: corruption. I'd like > to believe that the folks at OLPC have thought of safeguards that > prevent a corrupt official or even a parent of a kid from selling > those $100 laptops for say $300 and pocketing the difference. But > then corruption is a problem with any good-will type program be it > food, water, shelter, etc.
Funny you should mention $300. It seems $300 is appearing as a number in the OLPC discussions, but in almost the opposite context that you mention. There is a movement to have 100,000 people buy them for $300 each, with the extra $200 going towards purchases for 3rd world governments. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop As for reselling, they are planning to avoid problems like this by making the laptops distinct and ubiquitous. As you mention, they will be dumping 100,000 or more of these at a time in a country. If everyone has one, there is not much of a market for reselling. They also hope that since they will be easily identifiable, they will be able to attach a stigma to their misuse (e.g., reselling). -- David Dooling _______________________________________________ CWE-LUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.cwelug.org/ http://www.cwelug.org/archives/ http://www.cwelug.org/mailinglist/
