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