Sometime ago I told you that you could purchase a brand new laptop for as low as RM350. You don’t believe me because you say even Dell Vostro costs as much as 5 times the price, so there is really no reason a good laptop will cost so blardy cheap.
Anyway, after such a long time finally a small South American country, Uruguay, came forward to support the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project by ordering 100,000 units of the XO laptops, as they are know as, for schoolchildren aged six to 12. If the laptops were proved to be good, a further 300,000 units may be purchased by 2009.
On the other hand, Malaysian government is definitely more ambitious. We spent so much more on sending our angkasawan (astronaut in Malay) to the International Space Station on board a Russian spacecraft, Soyuz TMA-11. No, this was not a play-play program and we don’t stop here. We have further plans to send our second astronaut into the space soon. Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor certainly did Malaysians proud, and I am sure Faiz Khaleed will do the same too.
For the uninitiated, the cost of sending a single Malaysian into space has been estimated at RM105 million (approximately US$26 million). How many RM350 laptops could be purchased with this sort of money and how many young children could have benefited? 🙂