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With a new pc windows 'costs' something like 30 bucks, that doesn't mean that's what it 'cost' to produce. Now with software that's a lot easier than with hardware since the actual costs involved in creating another copy are substantially smaller.

But both of these examples are subsidized, a similar copy of windows at retail goes for a lot more and nobody bats an eye at that.

I'm reading this whole $10 laptop thing as a 'cost to buyer', including the subsidies, not a 'cost to manufacture'.

The cost of the parts (kb, display, cpu, memory, battery and circuitry) do not make it possible at any economy of scale to beat the roughly $100 mark, so it's pointless to try to interpret this as the 'manufacturing cost'.