answered my own question by rtfa.

Turkey's on that map but not on that list. What gives?

Actually, necessities are usually undercut by competitors, because necessities necessarily have great demand. Luxuries are where the real gouging happens.

Of course, this IS for charity. How much is too much for kids with cancer, jerk?

Haven't seen you in awhile, PG! How's that new iMac working out for you?

Exactly.

The key defining traits of teenage consumers are envy, jealousy, and alienation. Good products associate their users with with an existing, desirable group. Unless they drop a 2-million person userbase with this thing, they're doomed. That's the secret to Abercrombie, Mac B, not the music. It's the scandalous catalog, the false exclusivity, and the branding.

May as well just market it to parents, because they're the only ones spending money on this thing.

It can, and will, lower prices because computer equipment is no longer inherently contraband. That makes it far easier to bring computer equipment across the border, and it provides a form of competition.

Cheaper will definitely not mean cheap, though.

If the price of the state sanctioned computer did not tip you off already, things are not in sync with the rest of the free world in Cuba.

The difficulty with energy is not in the cost of production, it's in the stability. The power difference between a CRT and an LCD is minimal here, especially since the number of residents able to afford the offered computer is very slim. The difference would barely be a drop in the bucket.

Also, the dollar is worth exactly the same (basically) everywhere in the world. It is currently weak in comparison to other currencies, but it is still worth exactly one dollar.

But you're right on one count: I do know who to blame. I wholeheartedly blame the totalitarian government of Cuba, and the international community that continued to treat that government as legitimate. Good on you Raul, for every little step. Now let's work on the internet.

Then why not just donate what you do have right now? No one starts donating more money just because they have more. Everyone, statistically, donates exactly the same percentage. So, and this is a wild guess here, I'm doubting the red cross is going to see much of your $300,000 windfall.

Tesekkurler, Ozgur Bey.

Mac's aren't magic, people. They work the way they do because their OS is designed around a very specific set of parts. Anyone could assemble those same parts and build their own computer to be exactly as stable as a macintosh. The replies on this very forum make that perfectly clear.

I never put much stock in the "macs are computers for dumb people" line, but stop treating it like it's some secret family recipe handed down to Steve Jobs by his grandmother.

To the above poster, the point isn't what does a mac need today, but what will it need in three years. When my current iMac shuts down on me, I have to scrap all of it, including a perfectly good monitor, power supply, hard drive, etc. May as well just fix what's broken and get more use out of the rest of the system. This is a welcome development, in my eyes.