Just goes to show
how cheap these things really can be if not drip fed by de-facto cartels.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has taken $5.6m from chip shop Marvell to create a tablet PC intended for western consumption, stepping somewhat away from its stated aim of "providing an affordable educational device for use in the developing world". The tablet, which will apparently be demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics …
These things may or may not be a good thing for people in developing countries, but I think anyone who wants to be involved in the design and/or production of them should have to live for a mandatory year in one of those developing countries, in amongst one of the intended communities. That would give them a better idea of what is actually needed, before they get started on their fancy designs. The benefit would be enormous - a machine which does actually fill a need. (Or they might decide to switch their designs towards taps that produce clean drinking water, for example.)