I am a strong supporter of the OLPC project, and I also support India's decision not to participate. I support the OLPC project because I basically see it as an additional low-cost hardware alternative. I'm all for computer equipment becoming cheaper and more accessible, rather than exclusively targeting the high end market. To be honest, even though I see other aspects of technology implementation, such as teacher development or curriculum development, as crucial, it never bothered me that OLPC didn't provide these, because I never saw OLPC as a single be-all, end-all, or any kind of total integrated package, but just an additional hardware alternative. One of the positive benefits I predicted from OLPC is that it would put downward pressure on the computer price market, and I think that has already occurred, through sparking other laptop and desktop projects targetted at low-income groups in developing countries. OLPC also appears to be developing some innovative design features that again might be more broadly useful beyond this particular product (see the most recent issue of Wired). At the same time, while I welcome the development of OLPC and other low-cost computing alternatives, that doesn't mean that I think any particular country should be obligated to purchase them. I certainly don't know enough about the finances, context, and educational objectives of every developing country to know which ones might or might not reasonably benefit from such a substantial investment in one-to-one computing for their children (including not only the hardware, but the substantial amount of additional funds they'd have to spend for distribution, training, curriculum development, repair or replacement costs, etc.). It's certainly not surprising to me that India, which has a GDP per capita of about $600, would reject the initiative. In other words, my stance is Yes to OLPC and Yes to individual countries' declining to participate in OLPC. Finally, in answer to Jeremy's question about what happened to the laptop project in Maine, the answer is it's still going strong. The program was renewed after the first four-year contract (2002-2006) for a second four-year contract (2006-2010) for all 7th and 8th grade students in the state. There is also a laptop program in Maine at the high school level, but it is adopted (and funded) district by district and is thus not universal. Mark -- Mark Warschauer Associate Professor of Education and Informatics University of California, Irvine 2001 Berkeley Place Irvine, CA 92697-5500 tel: (949) 824-2526, fax: (949) 824-2965 markw@uci.edu; http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw