These laptops will be sold by the poor who receive them, and used by the children of middle-class families. Which is not bad in itself, but Mr Negroponte's claim that this will help the poorest of the poor is patently false.

The really poor kids need a quasi-PC device to help them learn to read and write, a device which is useless for anything else so it won't be sold or stolen. Such a device would change the world. This OLPC is a lot of hot air about nothing. Very expensive hot air. But it won't be the first time money is spent uselessly on development projects.

Jouni Rudvin , Oslo, Norway

If you need a manufacturing base of 3 million machines to start production, just sell the computer for $350 to children in developed countries with an advertising campaign that states "buy a PC and give one free to a needy child".
Heck, sell them to schools and get everyone involved.

These machines are the perfect starter for children learning computer skills.
Use consumerism to achieve your goals and help save the planet!

It seems these machines would be ideal in today's younger classrooms and think of the bonus of children being educated whilst using a carbon neutral computer.

Steve Lambert, Brisbane, Queensland

How about pitching in rather than masturbating about the headline, software or pricing?

Mr Nicholas Negroponte has a splendid vision and I for one support him.

Inspiration, education and training, all available over the 'net, are gigantic first steps to in a child's journey. Let the youngsters find their own path away from hunger, illness and the unceasing drivel and worthless promises of self-serving politicians.

I for one will step up and delight in offering 75$ to make a 100$ laptop available to a needy child..

Mr Nick.. Cheers, prayers & more power to you.

Molly Maguire, Jackson Village, New Hampshire/USA

Add shipping + plus tax and now that'll make it $215.00 So at if they went and worked more and made .13 cents per shoe. They would need to make 308 more shoes to get that extra $40.00

Jeff, Los Angeles, CA

If these computers can provide secure real-property rights and the rule of law... watch out world, here comes Africa!

Hernando de Soto, Global Village, SA

Wow way to be negative, and knock this endeavor. My question to you skeptics and cynics is, what is your big idea? How are you solving the pandemics that exist in the developing world? We should applaud these efforts not only for their practicality and their ability to transform the developing world, but also for the imagination that it takes to create an idea such as this.

chris, boulder, USA

Seriously, if these kids and their families can't even by food, how the hell is a $175 laptop going to help them. Who is this laptop supposed to go to?

Bob, chicago,

In response to Malcom's comments from Irvine - there is built in security so if the laptop is stolen it won't work. Each school has a server and each ;aptop is a node on a meshed network. If the laptop is stolen and the mesh net is not available it won't work.

The training is done by volunteers who train the local teachers to train the students.

JC, Amesbury, MA

I wonder if that kid on the left would prefer a dentist?

Dave, New York, New York

Put anything worth $100 into those poverty stricken neighborhoods and it will immediately be stolen and resold on the black market.

Where is the funding for training? Without teachers they will never be able to improve education - with or without computers.

malcolm, Irvine,

ship it with some antibiotics and a malaria voucher from m$. then itll be the 175$ laptop that accomplishes something

azazael, boobville, georgia

I lost confidence in this project the minute they included Microsoft in their plans ...

T, London, London

Jocko: considering this is a private endeavor, tax payers have nothing to do with it.

your view is ignorant, do you honestly believe because they live in a country with cheap labor they are doomed to that future, and therefore shouldn't be educated?

Education is what helps people change the world in which they live.

Dustin, Sburg, pa

Why?? Why are they including Windows? Why help the tyrants? They should stick to open source software only....

Hammad Rehman, Karachi, Pakistan

I think they should distribute this laptop to the US of A as the vast majority of them can't add or spell. Besides, $175 is probably what $100 would have been in Sterling terms anyway.

wui, andover,

The headline is right, it would take 1.75 children to buy one laptop.

Jeff Henry, Ohio, United States

glad to know they have finally established the real price of Microsoft operating system.

Julien, Manitoba, Canada

Btw, the info in this article is somewhat dated already thanks to a design decision: The laptop will have a pull cord instead of a crank.

Shane Geiger, Austin, TX

uhm, no the headline is correct. before it was $100 for 1 child, so now it would take 1.75 child(ren) to get the now $175 machine-- all things the same

josh, San francisco,

i want one. all i know is that when the
fall of the western world happens...
the world will be run by third world countries...
why...cause they will be the only one with computers
that wont require a plug...and a licensing fee.

mm, oakland, ca

The headline has sense. The ratio has decreased 1/1.75 < 1/1.

Roger Moreno, Jamaica,

Omg, yes please, can you kill the price per computer per child and the author's headline math thing obsession already?!

Mel, Woodstock, NY

OMG, kill the price per computer per child obsession already!

Mel, 14883,

"One laptop per 1.75 children" is correct. That means that nearly two children will share one laptop. "One laptop per 0.57 children" is incorrect. You would have to say 0.57 laptop for each child.

Robert Mathe, Ventura, CA

Ok, I think we understand people, and I think Troy gets it too now. You know how to preform a simple middle-school calculation...ok, we get it. Why not try expressing an original viewpoint or idea in response to the story? No, you have to point to this ridiculous mistake in reasoning and school the world in the "correct" way. Here's my response Troy:
I know what a laptop per 1.75 children means and you don't. I will demonstrate my superior intelligence by posting a comment to this story instructing you and others on the correct way to think about these quantities. I'm the smartest person in the room, buddy.
Christ people, be original. And to those who were, cheers.
Oh, I think cheap laptops for impoverished children is a great idea. Too bad the price has been bumped up.

SmarteyPants, Baltimore, MD

This is pathetic. Everyone is debating over the simple math of the headline. Which is, by the way, correct, however misleading. The project is to provide one laptop per child. It was never stated that the machine would start out at $100. The point is to insure that each child has their own learning implement, something that they can have ownership of and learn to use and care for on their own. As hardware prices decrease and the project gains greater economies of scale the price will decrease and the $100 price point will be attainable. Why must people constantly look for reasons to discount the worth of this project. Maybe it is not the most valuable solution that we as a global community could come up with, but lets not let that take away from the tremendous effort being put forth by many people to make a difference in the one way they know how. Instead of implying that this project is pointless because it doesn't address world hunger why don't you start your own project that will.

Wes, Burlington, VT

what does a third world country child need with a laptop?
they need food and safty. what good is it to educate children in the third world if they are just gonna be the main source of cheap labor?
I just hope the tax payers will not have to flip the bill for this laptops for all the worlds children scam.

jocko, huntington sta., ny

The headline is clever, but it doesn't make sense. Why would raising the price increase the laptops-to-children ratio?

Randy Jones, King, NC, USA

I would prefer if they can sell the laptop even for USD 200 per person in the developing world, provided, they don't insist for a minimum million pieces order from any govt. Instead make the laptop freely available in the market and pay a 10% sales commission. They will be able to sell easily 100 million pieces in India itself!!

Kris Dev, Chennai, India

Shouldn't that be one laptop per 0.57 children?

Dan Leech, Canterbury, Kent

.... yyyyeah, Troy, if you have a $100 per child budget and ten children, and the laptops cost $175, that's 10 children but only 5.7 laptops (your numbers) = 1.75 children per laptop. Go on, give it a whirl: 10/5.7 = 1.75. It's not a mathematical error.

Benjamin, San Francisco, California

Good lord, people it's a simple fraction.

If the initial setup is: $100 gives you 1 laptop per 1 child.

And it's now more expensive so that $175 gives you 1 laptop; the effect can be represented in 2 ways.

The first:

How much laptop do you get for $100? - .57 laptops (the comments saying you get 1 laptop per .57 children is wrong). So if you've allocated $100 per 1 child. Each kid gets 0.57 laptops. but we can't have fractional laptops, so...another way of thinking about it is:

The second:

How many kids do you cover per 1 laptop? - 1.75 kids. Exactly as the article states.

To make this one easier just assume that the price has doubled. If you had enough money to buy 20 kids laptops before it went up in price, these 20 kids would now have to settle for a total of 10 laptops -- or 1 laptop per 2 kids.

So the article is correct in its headline, etc...

A Thinking BUM, San Diego, CA

Troy, the math makes sense. Reconsider your specific example: Suppose we have $1000 to spend. We can provide 10 children with $100 laptops because $100x10=$1000. Now at $175 each and $1000 to spend we can buy 1000/175=5.71429 laptops, and 10/5.71429=1.75, meaning we now have 1.75 children/laptop.

But all the power to Dr. Negroponte! I hope they find new ways to bring the price down

Dan, Cambridge, MA,

Its a great idea, but what about problems of hunger and basic education like reading,writing, arithmetic, and basic human relations.

John, Flushing,

The math of the title is right. 1 laptop to be shared among 1.75 children. That translates as .57 laptops per child.

1 laptop per .57 children would mean that each child gets one full laptop and partial share in an additional one.

David, Los Angeles, CA

It would be easy to bring the cost of this device down for children. All they need to do is to open it to private and corporate sales on a "one for you, one for the world" basis. Thousands, and maybe millions of individuals and organizations would gladly pay $350 for these devices and be able to write off half the cost as a donation.

Mike, New York, USA

The application of the laptop and it's usage is more important than it's cost or the OS that it might run. It doesn't matter what you put into something if it isn't useful. Will there be an infrastructure or curriculum in place to utilize the laptops? CEOs take a pay cut and raise the base education standards in our country. We are falling behind.

American Citizen, Lost Hope, USA

Troy: The headline is correct, as is your math. By your calculations, there will be 5.7 laptops per 10 children, or 0.57 per child. 0.57/1 is equal to 1/1.75 - that is, just over half a laptop per child is the same as one laptop per 1.75 children.

Rush, idyllwild, CA

I think that they should make them available to the public for say $500.00 (I'd pay that) and let that offset the cost and build their order base simultaneously. Additionally it wold provide a much more diverse base for application programming.

Abraham King, Blue Diamond, Nevada

Troy, I think you might have misread the headline. "1 laptop per 1.75 children" means that 1/1.75 (or 4/7) of children will get a laptop. 4/7 of 10 children is about 5.7, as you said. Imagine that the price was $200, change the numbers to "one laptop per 2 children" and it becomes clearer.

Khusro, Philadelphia, PA

They would have been better quality if the OLPC organization had chosen to run Mac OS X on them as Steve Jobs offered.

And to the poster with the mathematical error: It's one laptop for $100 for one child, right? So, a laptop for $175 would be 1 laptop for 1.75 children...

Caleb, Oswego,

Are we really going to continue trying to delude ourselves with trying to push computers to people who are so poor that they are either homeless or living in straw/thatch huts? If it viewed as an education tool, then they need to be equipped properly with software to do so, since Internet connectivity will be umm questionable for a lot of the target users.

Brian, San Diego, CA

Troy, there is no math error. It says they wanted to budget for 1 laptop per child. If you set up an equation to find the equivalency when the price changes 75%, then to you set it up like this:

$100/1 child = $175/x x = 1.75 children

a 6th grader, Oviedo, Florida

What the heck! This was a great example of the power of open sour ce, and now they are making it run windows, they're just furthering the monopoly of Microsoft. I wonder what sort of FUD Microsoft used on St. Nick's project to make this work. I bet another part of the increased cost is the additional memory required by windows. Do we really want to expose our third world children to the viruses and attacks that are targeted at windows? I hope the countries that purchase the OLPC XO see that distinction and stick with the OS that was built for the project.

Joe, Denver, USA, Colorado

It would be 1 laptop per 0.57 child...

Fulano De tal, Miciudad,

Hooray for everyone that supports this project, especially Mr. Nicholas Negroponte.

Think how different Nicholas Negroponte's contributions are than those of John Negroponte, who was U.S. ambassador to Guatemala and Iraq, and then headed the U.S. Intelligence services. One gives something of inestimable value, the other helps the rich take from the poor and defenseless.

The project is a prime example of how the "haves" can help the "have-nots": give them the tools to learn, give them a way to join into the world economy.

I think this project is just wonderful, and I hope it succeeds beyond everyone's wildest expectations.

Tom Pfotzer, Washington DC, USA

Your headline is a mathematical error. If you set aside $100 for 10 children to get these laptops and the price changes to $175, 17.5 children will not get laptops. That doesn't make sense. In actuality, only 5 children would get laptops with that amount of money, or if you want to do decimals, 5.7 children will get a laptop from that sample size.

Troy, Tacoma, WA

I think it is a great Idea, brilliant to say the lease but this should be a project for the world at large and not only the most developed countries. I am from a small but developed country and I would love nothing more than to see all the children in my country have access to these laptop computers.

Cherry-Ann, St.John's, Antigua