At 08:45 PM 2/25/98 +0300, you wrote: Tim, It's a noble idea but before a country can manufacture their own computer they sould be able to manufacture the majority of the components for it otherwise they're nothing more than assembly line workers using imported parts. When you stop and consider all the stuff that goes into even the simplest computer (sheet metal, molded plastics, resistors, capacitors, ICs, transformers, circuit boards, special connectors, floppy drives, hard drives, etc etc etc) you realize the industrial scale that is needed for this sort of effort. I used to work in aerospace engineering and some of our foreign contracts called for a minimum percent of the components to be built in the country that was buying our systems. We made every effort to meet that requirement but I can tell you it's very hard to find companies capable of this level of technology outside of the US, England, Germany and Japan. For example, we had a contract with Canada and one of the parts we subcontracted to Canadian manufacturers was flexible circuit boards similar to those used in the hinge of laptops. NO Canadian manufacturer was able to make those parts despite their best efforts. PS I'm Canadian by birth so I don't want any flames about what Canada can and can't do. Joe