4.5 years ago, i made a little bet with david rothman
-- who i pleasantly refer to as "the idiot", inspired by a
label given by another observer on the e-book scene --
about my 5-year perspective on e-book hardware...

you can find the original thread here:
>   http://www.teleread.com/2005/11/29/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop-for-200/

as usual, for him, the idiot was blathering on about
how there'd be $50 e-book hardware "real soon now",
a line he'd been huckstering for years prior to that...

i always reminded him that an e-book reader-machine
would have to have a chip and a screen, and that meant
that it would essentially be a computer, and that those
were the most expensive parts of any computer, so that
it was totally unrealistic to expect that kind of pricing...

i said:
>   and if there’s a $50 computer — i mean a real computer –
>   available on _any_ thanksgiving in the next 5 years, i will
>   _buy_it_ for you. because the cost of _lunch_ will hit $50
>   before there is a $50 computer. and i can buy you lunch…

4.5 years later, there's still no $50 computer on the market.
so it looks like the idiot's crystal ball was severely cracked...

but walmart _will_ be selling the iphone (a real computer)
for just 99 bucks.  so my crystal ball?  pretty darn accurate.

-bowerbird