So, imagine that you're a starving child in Africa. You need food, water, medicine, and school supplies. Children all around you have died for lack of these things.

Someone offers you a laptop. Yes, it was built for $150 and is therefore pretty damn cheap as far as laptops. It's better than nothing, absolutely. It's an impressive feat of engineering. But - according to late night commercials anyway - just $1 per day could sponsor a child in a developing nation. That's almost five months of food, medicine, school supplies, etc. Which would you pick?

The One Laptop Per Child program states the following on its website:

Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

Great, they can express themselves now - but does that make them any less hungry, thirsty, or sick?

Yes, the One Laptop Per Child program does good. It helps them. But is it really the best way to help them? It seems that microfinance, encouraging condom use in Africa to fight AIDS, improving irrigation and farming techniques or many, many other things would be more well suited to their needs.