[OLPC India] Ordering OLPC Laptops(XOs) for schools

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 04:28:05PM +0530, Ajay Kumar wrote:
> Well, that indeed sounds reasonable, but a better solution might be to
> cross subsidize within the country. We all know that there are pockets
> in the country that are dirt poor and pockets that are filthy rich. That
> will give a sense of making a difference to the local community for the
> donors?

I like OLPC's global focus. I still think it makes sense to subsidize 
the largest orders from the smallest orders.

> But that would raise the important question who gets the subsidy?

Exactly, and what we really need is the per-unit price to come down 
enough that we don't need the subsidy. Initially the project was 
promising a $100 laptop and that is cheap enough that even our parents 
could probably afford it. The problem is that the price doubled to $200 
and then was raised to $300 (for 100 units). That's too much.

Over the next year, we hope that the laptop will sell fast enough to 
push the per-unit price down. A few million laptops in the field will 
greatly help offset the cost of development. We also expect lots of 
positive and exciting news reports from the early adoption countries. 
One way or another, the price should come down substantially by next 
year.

> Yet another solution might be to let the donor's indicate where they
> want the charity money to go, and make a best efforts based commitment
> to route their money to a demographic as near as possible to the
> intended one.

That's what we have now, isn't it?