At the time that the program launched , the typical retail price for a laptop was considerably in excess of $1,000 ( US ) .
It was infeasible to achieve this objective without also bringing a low - cost machine to production .
At the time that the program launched , the typical retail price for a laptop was considerably in excess of $1,000 ( US ) , so it was infeasible to achieve this objective without also bringing a low - cost machine to production .