[WSIS CS-Plenary] Now, the $75 laptop

[Carlos Afonso]

Quite a bit more!! Right now the Brazilian government cancelled a bid to
buy a few thousand for an experiment (I think it cannot go further than
an experiment, since having a "cheap" laptop for each school child in
the public school system in Brazil, with all logistics and educational
actions involved, would cost about US$13 billion or more!! -- I am
estimating 33 million children and a conservative full cost, with
everything involved, of US$400 per child), because the Negroponte
company and Intel were the only bidders and wanted to charge double of
what they charged in Uruguay and a lot more of what they charged in Peru
-- showing the obvious, it is just business...

The whole thing is so off track that the Negroponte company tries to 
sell the same package (one million gadgets) to every government, 
irrespective of the numbers of public school children in each country... 
  I wonder if their accounting is: if we manage to convince education 
officials (by what methods??) in 10 countries, this would let us get 
away with about $2 to $3 billion...

There has been a very revealing fight in the ranks recently, with 
Intel's exit (an impossible relationship, as the OLPC is an AMD gadget) 
and the ensuing disputes of both groups for contracts in developing 
countries. Sad, but revealing of real intentions. On the developing 
countries' side, there is always the possibility of a bribe to drive a 
contract through and so on...

I have been insisting that introducing ICTs in the public school system 
is not just a matter of terminal hardware for each student. It is far 
more than this, and it is obvious Brazil could do far better in this 
process with $13 billion by spending this money in a true strategic 
educational ICT program. For one, 93% of our public schools have no 
local available access to the Internet. Most of the children's families 
have no computer in their homes, and most of the schools have no 
computers at all, there is no strategic educational planning for 
teaching with ICTs etc etc etc. We are talking about far more than 
easily breakable (and stealable!) toys in the hands of poor children.

[]s fraternos

--c.a.

Rui Correia wrote:

> Dear All
> 
> After the $100 computer/ laptop (which ended up costing a bit more)
> now we have the $75 laptop.
> 
> http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2008/0801111001.asp?S=Reuters&A=REU&O=ql
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rui
> 
> 
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