I like this program. I think it's worth doing, instead of spending all that money and effort on food and medicine, because the UN and other charities and countries and churches have spent and are spending billions and billions of dollars for food/medical aid to Africa already, and with limited success at enabling them to support themselves. It's the whole giving a fish/teaching to fish issue. And hell, very much of that material ends up in the hands of their tyrants and militaries and never gets close to the starving families anyway.

It's truly a new idea. Maybe it will fall flat on its face and not accomplish one bit of good (unlikely) but hey, why not try it? I think it's better than putting all that money into the same old programs that haven't gotten us any closer to a solution to Africa's problems. And as someone else mentioned, not everyone in Africa is starving or seriously hurting for meds. They might be at the point where the best thing they could get is a computer to use to learn how to read and use basic technology. Maybe they'll learn something that'll help their community more than a food handout that would be gone after a week.

When I bought one, the operator asked me how many I wanted. I said "wait a minute! It's One Laptop Per Child, right?" :)
Cue ebayers.

cegras, it's Maslow, not Masrow.

This whole scheme is wrong. You think just giving a bunch of children in developing worlds laptops is going to make them skyrocket into scientists?

If that was the case we should just lock a bunch of apes in cages with a OLPC and in a year we'd have a self sustaining techno-city on our hands.

Only available in USA & Canada :( I had planned to buy one of these for my little brother for Christmas (and donate one, obviously). But no go :(

Geez, the cynicism on several of these posts. Let the program evolve and see what happens, for better or worse. I'm tempted on getting one for my 10 year-old son; besides getting the laptop, it hopefully will give him a more tangible connection with or a sense of the greater world at large.

As for whether laptops will make 3rd-world children "rocket scientists", well, that comment is plain snotty IMHO. What if it just facilitated a child's education as well as a link to the world that they otherwise likely would not have? I guess this all begs the question of the program's mission, purpose, and how success should be measured.

But it wouldn't be an OLPC article without a comment like that!

I bet many people would rather have $200 worth of food or medicine.