Would the childrens ownership of them lead to sufficiently greater care that technical support becomes unnecessary?
Ownership is key but not everything. We anticipate that there will be local support industries growing up around the project. It cannot and will not be done centrally. However, great care is being taken to minimize the possibility of breakdowns. We have many years of experience with laptops and know where the weak points are. Our OLPC design eliminates or minimizes these weak points. We have also designed a laptop that is amenable to field repair by the children themselves: a 9-year-old child can replace the motherboard. See Support pages.
