A few weeks ago, the ministry of ICT in India publicly announced the completion of a $35 laptop.  The product is aimed at students, and will be rolled out at educational institutions this upcoming school year.  Furthermore, the laptop’s price will hopefully fall to $20 over time, and then later to $10.  Additionally, the minister said that over one million of the laptops would be mass-produced to be used in rural areas, designed to bridge the digital divide.  The $35 laptop was India’s answer to One-Laptop-Per-Child’s $200 laptop, which over three million children in 41 countries utilize, according to OLPC’s website.

The price war between low-budget laptop producers, however, is missing a key element to the argument about what is the best option.  Price, durability, and usability are all important to consider when assessing the laptop’s potential impact to increase educational and economic opportunity.  Though too much emphasis on these indicators often causes one to forget about additional costs ICT development work.  After all, a lot more goes into making a laptop a useful education and development tool and a helpful instrument for an individual that simply purchasing one.

There are more financial, social, and human costs to making laptop computers successful development tools than its price.  As ICT4E experts at Vital Wave consulting explained, this is more complex than asking price:

“Governments need to consider the entire cost of school computing solutions, rather than merely the initial expenses. A total cost of ownership model takes into account recurrent and hidden costs such as teacher training, support and maintenance, and the cost of replacing hardware over a five-year period.

Support and training are recurrent costs that constitute two of the three largest costs in the total cost of ownership model. They are greater than hardware costs and much higher than software fees.”

Some governments have learned this lesson the hard way, including Panama.  Their “Internet for Everyone” project at the beginning of the century brought computers to hundreds of schools around the country, but then failed to provide connectivity to the schools or trained staff to educate the teachers or the students about how to use the technologies.  As a result, many computers ended up gathering moss (not dust—it’s too humid there) and going unused.

If the goal is to increase educational achievement and empower youth with more opportunity, than computers can be a resourceful tool when youth are taught how to use them for productive means, and when they have access to them.  Cheaper computers answer the questions of access, but how to use them is still a lingering issue that requires significant attention and funding to solve.

In summary, then, those working in international education should celebrate cheaper technologies, as high costs often close the door of opportunity from the onset.  Yet, lower and affordable prices does not mean that the technologies will lead to more opportunity, better quality of life, or economic development unless they are paired with adequate funding for teaching, maintenance, etc.