Reply #58: Logistics will be very very very very very very expensive.

[Statistical]

Most organizations who don't have a field deployment MASSIVELY under estimate the TCO (total cost of ownership).

You have the laptop hardware and software and that is NEGLIBLE. This is why companies don't care about paying for windows.
The hardware and software is the tiniest part of the software cost.

Just some components:

1) Hardware
2) Software
3) Damaged Equipment - Repairs
4) Damaged Equipments - Obtaining parts (sometimes machines reach end of life how do you deal w/ no more parts? Now you have 2 models in field everything got 3x as complicated)
4) Lost Equipment
5) Helpdesk for troubleshooting daily issues
6) Software support. Testing upgrade. Adobe Flash upgrade does it break requires functionality. Now imagine that for every upgrade of every app, the OS, every plugin, everything
7) Maintenance depot.
8) Training

Most people look at laptop hardware costs of say $600 and say hey that would be cheap. Cost is more like $500 - $2000 per machine PER YEAR for life assuming hardware upgrade every 3 years.

$2000 * 1 million students = $2 billion * 12 years (K-12) = $24 billion.

Now it can be done. My previous employer was one of the best for whole lifecycle maintenance & support for pharma clients. It isn't as cheap as most people assume though.

Will we get there someday? Sure but it will take some real dollars. In the interm something like Amazon Kindle (maybe a hardened one) would be better solution.