> > how expensive these were at the time

> This logic only works if you assume a direct, monotonic relationship between quantity of devices provided and net utility imparted to society.

I'm not sure I buy that. MIT were driving to cheap because they were in a funding model which was value focussed on cost-per-unit. They rejected a lot of things which consumer devices have as normal, to reduce the BOM. If they'd gone with laptops they'd have driven to a higher cost outcome, irrespective of the social utility, and less units directly goes to less C in the OLP C sense. The utility function was "every child should have one" not "every classroom should have some"

>> Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.

>You don't explain why you believe this to be true. Different technological implementations face different problems. If that were not the case, engineering would be a purposeless discipline. And there is no reason why "cheap" has to be a component of a philosophy behind contributing to the development of third-world economies and the communities from which those economies draw their manpower.

This is two points in one. The BOM for a purpose built laptop would have wound up asking the same questions: can I get this made for my unit budget or do I have to find a compromise? They would have reduced the mAH of the battery, or reduced screen size, to the unit sizes which their supply chain could provide at the price.

The "cheap" drive was theirs. They brought cheap to the table, having rejected Gates' foundation support because it expressly demanded they adopt Microsoft product and align with that as the deliverable for "goodput" purposes. (I read this, I can't find references. If you have better information share, but I believe this to be the case right now) They brought cheap to the table because of their funding model. fixed capex but demanding maximum unit delivery. Uruguay wanted one unit per kid. They had a specified population. Uruguayan funding was contingent on every kid getting one. Now you have a budget problem, bring your BOM to the table.

>> Post-hoc reasoning.

> The book itself is a reflection on the project, so "post-hoc" should carry no dirty connotation. Moreover, the problem of providing technology to poor kids persists in the present day. Today, we see a very different device landscape and cost profile versus back in the year 2005.

No disagree on the last point. My primary complaint is there are a mix of things going on here, including stuff said at the time around how one-eyed Negroponte and Jepson were being, but some things said with hindsight were not how it was seen at the time. Like .. laptops. People are bringing modern unit cost to the table against what was feasible at the time. At the time, a viable laptop was going to bust their margins for their funding model. Negroponte was harking back to the glory days of the media labs, of MIT's influence on the nature of computing and society, and didn't want to be told practicalities and given what MIT had achieved in the past, it was tenable to think they might carry it off. Who knows, if sugar had more love, maybe it would be the interface du jour for education? I doubt it, but its not impossible. After all, nobody thought "zoom" was going to become the mechanism for education, and here we are.