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Cheap Laptops Getting Tryouts in Small Pilot Projects

Bold initiative still faces questions about worth.

The audacious plan to put $100 laptop computers into the hands of children and teachers in some of the world’s poorest countries has enjoyed a lengthy afterglow from its celebrated launch in 2005—without yet proving it is both workable and wise.

Since Nicholas Negroponte, the former head of the MIT Media Laboratory, first presented the plan to international leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, two years ago, many have questioned the initiative on both scores.

Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel Corp., the computer-chip-making giant, argues the low-cost laptop lacks such essential features as sufficient data storage. And more recently, in an interview in the journal Foreign Policy , he said “the money would be more intelligently spent on creating the infrastructure—training teachers and creating...