David Henderson has a fairly on-the-ball piece up about MIT’s 100$ laptop for poor countries getting mired in a bureaucratic nightmare. He points out that there’s a serious problem with having .gov’s buy the laptops and then distribute them to the people.

Logistics aside, I see another problem there. Unless this is the most splendidly brain-dead easy to use piece of technology ever invented, they’re going to need some training. In many years of reviewing products I have yet to see an advanced system that runs various pieces of software in multiple languages that needs no introduction.

Better distribution methods can be seen in South American countries that offer very low interest loans to purchase computers. That way, people that can use them can buy them without any upfront cash and benefit from them while having a vested interest in keeping the laptop running. And learning how to use it.

Subsidizing the cost and offering them up for whatever the market will bear (even if that’s only a few pennies on the dollar) is good. Punting them all over the globe might not be so hot. We’ll see.