

India’s $10 Laptop Sounds Like a Bad Joke  - medianama
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158871/indias_10_laptop_sounds_like_a_bad_joke.html

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jacquesm
With a new pc windows 'costs' something like 30 bucks, that doesn't mean
that's what it 'cost' to produce. Now with software that's a lot easier than
with hardware since the actual costs involved in creating another copy are
substantially smaller.

But both of these examples are subsidized, a similar copy of windows at retail
goes for a lot more and nobody bats an eye at that.

I'm reading this whole $10 laptop thing as a 'cost to buyer', including the
subsidies, not a 'cost to manufacture'.

The cost of the parts (kb, display, cpu, memory, battery and circuitry) do not
make it possible at any economy of scale to beat the roughly $100 mark, so
it's pointless to try to interpret this as the 'manufacturing cost'.

