Toot…

Read an interesting news today, that the Malaysian Government will be taking RM1 billion from the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Universal Service Provision fund to purchase laptop for disadvantaged students.

Nevermind that it is actually announced under the National Broadband Initiative (NBI). While I do not oppose government donating laptops, what I’m interested in is what sort of laptops the government will be purchasing, and from whom.

Ever heard of the $100 laptop? I supposed it’s more appropriate to call it the $199 laptop. That aside, assuming that the government is purchasing this laptop, which is approximately RM 660 with the current exchange rate of 1 USD = 3.318 MYR, the government will be able to purchased a whooping 1.5 million units of laptops for the students, disregarding shipping and handling.

Let’s assuming that the government is buying Dell laptops, the current Inspiron Mini 10v is selling at just RM 999, which means the government can afford to buy approximately 1 million laptops, again, disregarding shipping and handling.

Let’s just hope that these laptops will not turned out to be something like those RM 12k monsters currently sitting in the parliament.