One laptop per child...not the best use of money and resources?

At first glance the idea of one laptop per child in third world countries sounded like a good idea, it isn’t until you actually think about what a society actually need just to keep technology as a functioning part of it. While the work that OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte is trying to achieve is noble, it seems like the money could be better spent on missions such as $1 a day or the Salvation Army, using money to feed and clothe communities. Its quotes like this from the OLPC website “It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project” that make you think that the money used to produce these laptops could be used to build quality education system and the infrastructure needed to support technology. It seems like OLPC are five steps ahead of where most of these third world countries are with regards to being able to actually use the technology. While the idea of the widening digital divide is a real one, it is important to also consider the fact that commodities and technology do not have the same level of fetishisation in the third world than in the West. Possibly the most obvious hurdle standing in the way of OLPC being more successful is the fact that a lot of these places either do not or have limited access to power sources which are somewhat necessary to recharge the laptops. Personally while I believe the overall idea is a good one, it can also be said that there is a growing digital divide in countries like America so it seems the money and the laptops would be better spent and used in developed countries that already have the infrastructure to support the technology. I believe that we need to give third world countries the resources they need in order to survive before we should even start to think about giving them technology such as laptops that will become unusable in a few years anyway.