On 5/30/06, Jeff Kinz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Question: Does Cambodia really need to be spending its money on cheap but
durable laptops imported from Taiwan?
Its a heck of lot cheaper to make copies of bits than it is to make
copies of paper.
Neither of the above appear to be correct in their stated assumptions.
Most of the cost of a text book (or any book, for that matter) is
outside the cost of materials and actual printing process. Royalties,
promotions, overhead, etc., is where the big cost comes from. I
believe I saw a claim that these texts would be "free" in this area.
Assuming you can get sufficient volume, cost per copy should be a few
dollars, or even less.
Books can rot or be damaged; so can equipment. I doubt there's any
real data as to which would be more durable in the target environment.
Lacking data, we can't say one way or the other.
The cost per copy for printed books is fixed for a given print run,
but will always be non-zero.
The cost per copy for an "e-book" is also non-zero. If nothing
else, it will consume some of that flash storage, and the power to do
the copy. I expect this can be considered insignificant, though.
More significant is the cost of the equipment (the "laptop"). If
you only have one book, that means your book cost whatever the laptop
cost -- which is about $130, I guess. That's an expensive textbook,
even by US college standards. It isn't until you start having a few
dozen texts on a single laptop that you start to see returns. Once
you're past 100 or so texts, you should be into the "the laptop method
is actually cheaper" range.
Whether or not the 100 texts (printed or electronic) will actually
make it to the people, or actually be used if they do make it, is
another question.
-- Ben
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