* Yes, I know people / companies would not have donated the same amount of $ for a non-sexy cause.

The areas for which it was intended did not need mosquito nets - places such as rural Mexico. These places have power and running water.

While saving lives is a worthwhile goal, saving them just so they can carry on being perpetually dependent on foreign aid seems to be pretty unfair on both the nations giving aid and the nations receiving it.

This is an example of a radical opinion that one might expect to be downvoted for disagreement here on HN, but I see (from current net upvotes) that others agree, or at least think the comment contributes to the discussion here. I'll expand on this a bit, from my perspective as a parent of wealthy-country children who have long had access to computers. Of course I grew up without ready computer access. Children having personal computers with online access is, like most of human life, a TRADE-OFF. I think computers are wonderful tools and helpful for self-directed learning, but they are also enormous time sinks and distractions from books and many hands-on activities. Current research doesn't unambiguously show that computer use contrasted with nonuse is even an advantage for learning K-12 academic subjects. (Some studies appear to show academic achievement going down as computer use goes up in developed countries.) The role of easy telecommunications in fostering economic development seems beyond dispute, but voice telephony and an efficient postal system for adults may go most of the way to providing that benefit, without all children needing an Internet-connected laptop.

I have lived in poor countries, which is why I am conscious that where money is scarce, one must think about what way of spending money produces the best results. The OLPC project certainly had noble goals, and strove to be inexpensive, but perhaps the countries the project intended to serve need something else more urgently.

If those people had been afforded opportunities similar to those available in the US their total salaries would be somewhere between $20 and $40 trillion.

That's a huge amount of wasted potential - all those resources could be working on making all of our lives better - advancing medicine, computer science, engineering and other things. Instead they are living miserable lives in atrocious slums.

Perhaps, but affording those people opportunities similar to those available in the United States might cost a great deal of money, and might also involve controversial steps such as overthrowing corrupt governments and promoting English rather than local languages as a language of school instruction. Poor countries (I have lived in them) are interacting systems of climate, natural resource base, cultural tradition, existing economic level, existing level of education, international trade patterns, political system, and other influences, and thus poor countries don't change overnight.

You can't wait for perfection - you have to get started with what's practical now and iterate. Equal opportunity for all is the long term goal, not something you should expect tomorrow.

Fortunately whatever else the OLPC project did, it inspired the Eee and that inspired a whole generation of low power, cheap devices which are (more) affordable for everyone. That may not be the step they expected, but it's one in the right direction!