Lately I've been thinking about the One Laptop per Child program and I'm wondering if they are going down the wrong path.

The OLPC program was formed to oversee the creation of a cost effective laptop for children in developing countries. Great idea right?

To go about this they decided to design their own laptops. These are slightly different than normal laptops in that they are more rugged, built to be used in bright sunlight, and cheaper than average. The target price for laptops was to be $100.

To this end they designed some brilliant laptops, but never were able to get the cost below $200 per laptop. Although these laptops are far less expensive than average, the price is still double what they originally budgeted. I got thinking about this more when I saw some netbooks on Ebay with roughly comparable specifications selling for $100.

My question is "Why innovate and generate a stream of expensive hardware when you can instead focus on taking inexpensive hardware and reducing the price even further?" Admittedly the Ebay netbooks aren't as rugged, but at half the price this just might be forgivable. The extra demand from the OLPC project could have also created economies of scale and possibly reduced the price even further.

Right now I'm thinking that the choice to build rather than buy probably stems from some typical nerdy thinking. Why buy when you can build and fiddle around with cool hardware?

What difference could they have made if they chose to forgo hardware development in order to meet their target price? How many more children could have a laptop? How many more lives could have been changed?