...I haven't done any research on the topic, so I really don't know much about it, but the "one laptop per child" idea that Gates apparently slammed really doesn't get me going either - in fact, it might be kind of a waste of resources. My main questions are as follows:

1) What is the point of this effort? Is it to simply put a laptop in a child's hands - and if so, what are the immediate benefits of doing something like that for a child that still can't eat?

2) What software is going to be installed on the machine? What's the point of this software? Most computers today get their benefit from being connected to a network - teaching a child how to use Microsoft Word isn't necessarily going to advance them.

3) The laptops are $100.00 - is a computer the best thing to spend $100.00 on when developing countries have famine, hunger, war, etc. raging on?

...to me it seems like a wasteful act of idiology, one of those things that makes people feel better about themselves but doesn't really accomplish much.