Jens Ropers wrote:
Also, I would observe that the "minimum prize level" I mentioned above is still totally out of reach of (to make up a number), say 90% of the world population. They just can't spare that money, ridiculously little though it may seem to us. Let's not forget that.
But they can't spare the money to pay for printing and shipping a 20-volume set of encyclopedias either. Someone else (i.e. donors) is going to have to pay for it either way. I was merely pointing out that it may be cheaper, in the long run, for us to ship people computers with CD-ROMs than for us to continually ship them paper encyclopedia sets every year or two.
A minimally cheap newly built computer system these days can be easily had for under $500 (just buy the bottom line of everything, which will still be 10x what you need to view static HTML pages). I don't have good numbers on dead-tree printing and distribution costs to compare with though, which would influence the decision.
-Mark