[geeks] $100 One Laptop Per Child - grist for the mill

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 07:56:13AM +0200, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> How big would that be? A dead tree library costs a lot of money to buy
> the books, ship them, store them and make them available. They also have
> the temptation to be used for fuel.


After I wrote this I asked my wife for some information. She is the
libarian at a small English speaking k-12 school. Their collection is
about 17,000 books. As a rough guess the replacement cost of the books
is about $300k. 

While it's obvious to anyone that a single $100 laptop or a $100 laptop
with a $1,000 of storage would not replace such a library, in a community
that has (near) zero books, it would be a start. Providing one laptop
to each family in a village of 50 families would be nothing compared
to buying all of those books, transporting them, housing them, and
maintaining the collection.

The idea is to provide every possible means of assistance. This is just
one of them.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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