Developers of low-cost PCs hit snags

While announcements by governments, non-profits and corporations of plans to create low-cost PCs for the developing world get a lot of media attention, once the hard work of actually producing and marketing those PCs begins, the spotlight has usually moved on. However, CNet took a look at one country, Brazil, which has struggled to create a low-cost PC for six years, and has yet to see those efforts pay off. Although low incomes — the Brazilian minimum wage is just $120 a month — have a lot to do with the difficulty in creating an affordable mass-market PC, other issues include high taxes and shipping costs, which can actually make a PC more expensive in Brazil than a comparable model might be in the US. Early Brazilian attempts included a domestically made PC that proved unworkable, and a model that cost $600, far more than developers had envisioned. The latest program, the Computer for Everyone, attempts to keep costs down by offering tax breaks to manufacturers and using open-source software. However, even that has failed to get off the ground, amid lack of interest from manufacturers, and arguments over software. In the end, the biggest market for cheap PCs may not be in the developing world, but in the US, where discounters such as Wal-Mart (who's marketing $400 laptops this Black Friday) are able to use their purchasing power to squeeze suppliers and get prices down.