The much-hyped $100 laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC), is considered by most people to be a pretty good idea.

The theory is that an effective, high-tech teaching tool that can be distributed to Third World populations at low cost and doesn't need a huge service infrastructure will improve not only education but ultimately the economies of the countries where it is deployed.

However, not everyone agrees this is a good idea.

Eugene Kaspersky, founder and head of anti-virus research for Kaspersky Labs, steps forward as the latest nay-sayer in an opinion piece dated June 13 on the company's Web site).

In the piece about changes in the anti-virus industry, Kaspersky opines: "A particular cause for concern is programs which advocate 'cheap computers for poor Third World countries' - these further encourage criminal activity on the Internet. Statistics on the number of malicious programs originating from specific countries confirm this: The world leader in virus writing is China, followed by Latin America, with Russia and Eastern European countries not far behind."

Either Kaspersky is courting publicity in a shameless manner, or he is guilty of drawing false conclusions from the data. Certainly, the assertion that current trends driven by a predominantly Windows PC environment can be extrapolated to apply to the OLPC, a device that isn't planned to run Windows, is a stretch.

In fact, considering current Third World-originated computer crime, such as the Nigerian 411 scam, the largest risk would probably be from scammers and phishers: And that's a small price to pay for improving the world. The OLPC project has the potential to transform life for many children and adults, and that far outweighs the potential it might have for virus and malware writers.

Kaspersky is the third person to get publicity on this topic. The other two are Craig Barrett, Intel's chairman, who said, "I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget'" back in December '05 when Advanced Micro Devices was chosen as the processor supplier (aha!), and Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, argued that smart cell phones plugged into televisions and augmented by keyboards would be a better vehicle for computer-enabling the Third World than a PC-style device.In fact, Gates was downright critical of the OLPC and commented: "If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user. Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type." (The "cranking" reference alludes to an early design of the computer that featured a hand-crank power option, now replaced by a foot-powered generator.)