"Implementation planning has to move beyond the per-unit cost, it must include the solution for charging the laptops, host the more power-hungry XS server, extend the mesh network to the community, and connect to the Internet at least occasionally. And that doesn't even touch the costs of curricula development, teacher training, and institutional changes for distribution, maintenance, even testing.
"My 2006 TCO
"I got into a good amount of hot water by proposing that the cost of OLPC projects went beyond (number of students)×($100). The magic number was $972/laptop for a 5-year project. Widely decried, a few much more in-depth explorations revealed that my back-of-the-envelope TCO calculation was actually pretty close."
