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Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

> The cheapest way to give 100 books to someone in the third world is to give them a laptop (and a way to power it.)

I doubt it. Have a look at these prices[0]. The most expensive books do not exceed ₹150. A 100 of those costs ₹15000. $100 = ₹6500. Plus add the power source. You get very close to ₹15000. And as we saw, $100 was nowhere near enough to make a good usable laptop/educational device. So you need to spend more. And that is when compared to Amazon! Buying books wholesale (or printing them) will be even cheaper.

[0] https://www.amazon.in/Books-NCERT/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A97...

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Have you ever tried to ship 100 books? Last time I tried to ship 2 cookbooks across the US it was nearly $30 for just shipping. I would much rather ship a laptop and a power solution.

Not to mention the storage and care of 100 books in less-than-ideal housing where moisture and rodents are very real problems. Plus the actual volume of 100 some books.

Compared to a laptop, that can sit in your bag, and also serve as a light source.

It doesn't need to be a good laptop, it just has to be a laptop. There were still french farmers using text only BBS like terminals a decade ago, quite happily.

Have you clicked the link in my comment? Delivery of books is cheap in third world countries. OLPC was not targeting American students!

Also, you don't buy 100 books at once. A year in school will need about 10 books. Send the next 10 next year.

My local library and schools constantly emphasize that reading your kid 1000 books before they are 5 is a key to success. (I suspect they are mistaking correlation for causation, but I have never checked)

I'm not sure either comparison is easy to make. With 100 books, you can provide for 100 people at once. A laptop can't do that. And in 20 years, how many of those books will continue to be providing information compared to the laptop?

I think both situations have unique benefits and drawbacks, and ranking which of those are worth more than others is something we don't yet have an objective measure for. As such, the comparison still seems quite subjective, even if we can give concrete numbers to a lot of the comparisons. The answer to which is best might even be situational.

You wouldn't ship the books, you would buy them locally. Most developing countries have local manufacture of books, or at least small scale traders who will import the books and resell locally. This would also boost the local economy a bit.

For reference, I buy my niece some nice books for $1 each. These last the who year and are available everywhere.

Media mail? Were they 25 pounds each?

Media mail is subsidized.

source?

Source: Have ever shipped something via the USPS.

Or https://www.usps.com/ship/mail-shipping-services.htm

You are right that the $100 robust laptop didn't exist and still doesn't.

But I believe that _that_ is « The real reason why OLPC failed », not that it would have been a bad idea if it were possible.

Dude you are reading that comment a bit to literally. Internet can easily supply one with information equivalent to hundreds or thousands of books. Paper can obviously not match that.

Not to mention that, even without internet, the OLPC XO-1 ships with bunches of stuff already on it.

Here's a directory dump from one of mine: https://alexvh.me/share/olpc-library-listing.txt

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