Wow, I'll let others worry more about the "one laptop per terrorist supporter" issues and say, WTF? They city's spending almost $11,000,000 / year to give computers and high-speed Internet to 3000 families? That's about $3500 / family! Who are they buying these things from, Dash Domi? Why not just give half to the schools and half to the local libraries to put computers for everyone?

Now, this sounds more like a "social justice" program -- i.e. Bucks for Buzz and his Boys -- than it does a meaningful attempt to help anyone, but I've got a better deal for the city and the disadvantaged: outsource it to me and I'll save the city lots of money and double the number of disadvantaged kids getting computers.

• For $22.95 / month I can get Rogers Ultralight Internet.
• For $450 I can get Dell Inspiron 531 with plenty of everything and a 17" LCD Monitor

The logistics are fairly simple. Dell will ship directly to their apartment and I'll handle the Rogers billing from here. I'll assume I can get Rogers and Dell to eat GST & PST given the size of the order we're making, plus the potential for a tax write off for everyone. Rogers and Dell will also handle tech support directly, which is a reasonable part of becoming computer literate. The city will provide the names and addresses who to ship to. I'll need 5 people at say $50,000 / each to handle paperwork and logistics. One person will be dedicated to Googling names to weed out friends-of-terrorists. Let's also posit that I'll maintain another 6000 Internet accounts for people who have already got their computers.

So here's the budget:

• Internet connection: $1.65 million (6000 @ 22.95/month * 12 months)
• Legacy internet: $1.65 million (6000 @ 22.95/month * 12 months)
• Computers: $2.7 million (6000 @ $450 / each)
• Employees: $250,000 (5 @ $50,000)
• Offices: $150,000
  
• Subtotal: $6.4 million
• Management fee: 1.28 million (20%)
  
• Grand total: $7.68 million
• Savings to City of Toronto: $3.08 million

That'll buy Dave Miller a lot of food carts. I'm available on my cell during normal working hours.