And sometimes the rich are flown offshore with no purchase commitments at all.

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As long as you are selling to homo-sapiens, the fundamental motivations to buy and the skills to obtain purchase commitments will remain the same.

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Many governments (including Nigeria's and Libya's) cancelled their informal commitments to purchase the machines when they realised the devices were untried, the price higher than envisaged and other cheap laptops available.

ECONOMIST: Great idea. Shame about the mediocre computer