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The $100 laptop: What went wrong, written by John Dvorak, is a terrible article. So much FUD.

The idea was developed by the charming Nicolas Negroponte, former head of the MIT Media Lab and organizer of One Laptop Per Child, an initiative to produce a $100 laptop and distribute it to the poorest children in the world.

This laptop isn’t going to the kids who are the poorest. It’s going to the kids who have their other basic needs met, but need better education and more access to information.

Let’s face it: These high-tech gems are a laughable addition to a mud hut.

Yes, because everyone in a developing nation lives in mud huts! For god sakes, it’s going to help kids in countries like Libya, where their life expectancy rate is 76.69 years (which is just under the U.S. life expectancy at 77.85 years). Not everyone in a non-western country lives in poverty and squalid conditions, regardless of what you see on T.V.

Besides incredible difficulties with the distribution networks in Africa, Zachary wonders who will maintain these machines. Generally speaking, a societal infrastructure with a lot of computers needs a lot of support mechanisms.

“And in today’s world the real value of a computer is it being networked,” says Zachary. “Finding a network in the poor areas is either impossible or very expensive.”

The laptops network themselves. Read the frequently asked questions at http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html.