$100 laptop jumps 40%

It's getting too close to the low end of "real" laptops. The cheapest new laptop is $399 on Tigerdirect, with now too bad "real" specs....

While it's true a $40 price jump could mean a week's worth of work - or more like a month in many places, this is only a factor if the laptops are sold to the public. However, individuals won't be buying the laptops. Negroponte isn't planning to sell them to people - he's going to sell them in bulk to education ministries, and they will be expected to give them away to students. So the final cost of each laptop shouldn't impact whether or not a particular student will receive one. Also, on several occasions (at MIT, at the UN WSIS summit), I've heard Negroponte say that the $100 laptop won't actually a $100 laptop for many years. The first round of laptops will be more expensive, and the price will come down over a period of several years. One hundred bucks is a goal, not a starting point. That's probably why they prefer to call it the One Laptop Per Child initiative (OLPC), and not the $100 laptop initiative.

I'm actually at a one-to-one laptop conference in Boston right now, and I'm amazed how few people are talking about the OLPC laptop. Probably because most of them don't want to have to wait years for the laptops to become available. Meanwhile, there are a growing number of laptop initiatives in schools, like Maine's, which is about to enter its fifth year. Former Maine gov Angus King talked about it yesterday here at the conference; I've got detailed notes on my blog if anyone is interested. -andy

"Negroponte isn't planning to sell them to people - he's going to sell them in bulk to education ministries..."

Which to me points out that at $140, Negroponte is selling to governments as if he was a regular distributor and not a retailer. So, if I can purchase a laptop at retail - with it's associated hike in the margin - for under $400 (didn't Wal*Mart also do this last Fall?), then I assume the distributor is selling them to retail for under $300. The gap narrows.

Of course Negroponte's laptop is designed for a different environment and has different specs, but it appears to me as if it's more and more just a different kind of laptop with a particularly unique screen. That being the case, and looking at the other offerings, I can't help but wonder if the manufacturers aren't pulling in the same profits on this product as they are on others. The cynic in me sees a relatively low-risk venture bundled with some great PR and with a potentially-lucrative upside in sheer volume; government programs are often the most lucrative.

Someone please tell me that this product is different and that my suspicians are entirely off base.

i need a good lapto that cost about $230 thanks