My argument is not that. My argument is that you feed bread, rice and meat to a starving person. Not cake and pizza. The first requirement to improve students' life is to ensure they have adequate books, stationery, good teachers and food. Laptops come a bit later.

I don't think anyone seriously argues that kids should receive laptops over food.

But your argument is exactly that: You're implying that books and pencils are more important for education than "high"-tech.

Do you really think having a pencil, textbook and a notepad is more important than having access to the internet with countless, excellent free resources of education (e.g. Khan Academy).

You're conflating two different problems. OLPC was never meant to replace food (or other necessities).

Additionally, having a dictionary, spell checker and encyclopedia at your fingertips make a laptop a great addition to a classroom.

It was meant to be an analogy.

Books, stationery; need to be stored properly to protect them from climate and insects. Need to be protected from unscrupulous adults who desire fire tinder.

Solar-charged laptops can be weather-sealed and are much less useful for unintended destructive uses.

The OLPC XO-1 was very effective for extremely destructive uses.

When the US military was trying to put Iraq and Afghanistan back together, someone there approached OLPC about supplying the XO-1 to the kids. A huge concern was that it could be turned into a really effective IED trigger. There is a camera to detect motion, a DC-capable audio jack for wiring in arbitrary parts, the speakers and microphone for range-finding, the resistive touchpad as a pressure sensor, and of course the WiFi for sending commands. To initiate the explosion there was an audio output jack, USB ports that could be powered on or off, and a screen backlight.