Re: [WikiEN-l] Hypothetical print version (was Paper is not paper)

There will eventually be a print version of a subset of Wikipedia. Most likely a very small subset of it. As for whether or not there should be one, I'm actually not so sure of it. Yeah, Jimbo wants to hand them out to people in third world countries, but maybe it'll be possible, by the time the print version is ready, to just include the digital version on the $100 laptops being handed out by that MIT project (http:// laptop.media.mit.edu/). I guess you could argue that dead trees are less expensive, but are they really that much less expensive? How much would it cost just to print a single volume 1200 page encyclopedia? I'm thinking $50 or so in heavy bulk, but maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about. Then add in the distribution costs, and maybe we'd be better off just hitching a ride on a laptop. Incidently, has someone from Wikimedia talked to the MIT group about including Wikipedia on the laptops? They'd be kind of crazy not to - I think the two projects fit together perfectly.