Taran Rampersad writes:
>>..Toss in the fact that only 50,000 [Simputers] were produced compared to
the millions
of components built by commercial entities. Don't believe me? Ask
Negroponte why it takes a minimum order of 1 *million* PCs to meet the
$100 laptop which the MIT Media Lab is looking at. Build 1 million
Simputers, and the price would be drastically lower....
Negroponte's insistence on orders of a million computers or more is, I
think, a brilliant piece of humanitarian strategy, perhaps as important as
the computing device itself.
It says to the world, and in particular to the governments of the poor
countires, 1) We will lose more generations of our young to poverty and
despair if you do not take bold steps; 2) A mass attack on the digital
divide needs to be sponsored by the nation itself; 3)If you, the government,
buy these machines in quantity the price can be dramatically reduced; and 4)
You can can distribute them at your cost, or at prices that include a
government subsidy.
Selling a handful of high-priced Simputers to the already computer literate
of a nation will do little to lessen ignorance and poverty.
If the Simputer is a superior product, and mass producing it will
dramatically lower its price, the Simputer firm might emulate Negroponte and
insist on mass orders.
Sombining mass orders with lower prices and the public computing idea would
result in a major and substantial attack on the digital divide.
A slow trickle of $480 computers to a handful of the already computer users
will result in more generations of the needy being deprived of their use.
Steve Eskow
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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