beside the less than 1% of the population the rest of the country are middle-class to poor and the poor exceed the middle-class

there are families that does not have anything to eat for days and lives on the genorocity of the people

please stop watching the propoganda

yes the country is supposed to be the wealthiest in the world by your measure but bear in mind that only less than 10% is reaching the people because of the imbezelment and theft by those princes and their entourage

Education in Saudi are not the best but it is developing and children there can get help by such laptops

There are 100m children in the world of primary school age that are not in education. Education is the single biggest factor in the successful elimination of extreme poverty, hunger and disease.

The problem will not be solved by giving laptops to children already in school (though the aim is laudable), but by ensuring that there is universal primary education. This is the second of the UN’s millenium development goals agreed to by the the G8 in 2000. Developed countries agreed to give 0.7% of GDP towards the achievement of these goals and most have failed and continue to fail to meet their commitments.

And here’s the crunch. The $10bn a year that it is estimated it would take to achieve universal primary education is less than half what Americans spend on ice cream in a year.

Rather than an OLPC, a wind-up radio that allows children to listen to a lesson without leaving their village is a better investment (as long as the women in the village look after it).

But the best thing that people like us can do is use our skills to lobby our governments to encourage all governments, especially those in sub-saharan Africa to build schools that are free to attend for all their children.

This could be great for Special Needs, especially the visually impaired who have to put up with A4+ photocopies of their school books which depend on photocopier quality for clarity, are very unwieldy for small hands, get bashed around in schoolbags so can’t be passed on once finished with and weigh down the schoolbag too.

If the photo shows a genuine eBook where the pictures are on one side and the text is adjustable (font size, colour and background colour) on the other side it will be brilliant for VI, dyslexics and many more.

I hope the RNIB and other special needs related bodies jump on this bandwagon.

Your idea is certainly the most brilliant one I have read in this thread…by far. It’s at least better (and a lot less elitist than say…product red).
Why does it take half a two dozen Crunchers to beat a good idea to death when it comes up. Typing is irrelevant in those countries…and food has absolutely nothing to do with PCs but your heart is in the right place–I guess.

Billions of currently computer-less people will never interface will a traditional keyboard. They will instead leapfrog to new touch-screen interfaces on smaller devices such as the Apple “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ or the new One Laptop P…