Get in line to buy a $50 laptop

A bizarre little tale of laptop lust down in Virginia might interest anyone here in Maine who has been following our middle-school computer initiative in recent years.

Five years after the nation’s first-ever laptop program was proposed by former Gov. Angus King, there is now a portable computer in the hands of every seventh- and eight-grader in Maine’s public schools. Encouraged by the program’s success, the state implemented a school funding formula this year that encourages school districts to buy laptops for their high schoolers, too.

But as the people of Henrico County, Va., proved in startling fashion the other day, the challenge is not necessarily how to get laptops into the classrooms but what to do with the machines once they’ve outlived their usefulness.

The school system there, according to The Associated Press, decided that about 1,000 of its 4-year-old Apple iBooks, the kind used in Maine’s schools, were no longer worth upgrading. So on Tuesday, they brought all the used laptops to the Richmond International Raceway and offered them for sale to the public at a mere $50 each. Since a new iBook costs between $999 and $1,299, the people of Henrico County smelled a deal much too good to pass up. Though the raceway gates did not open until 7 a.m., people began showing up as early as 1:30 a.m. By the time the sale was set to begin, an estimated 5,500 locals were massed outside, desperate to snatch up their low-priced, high-tech prizes.

It’s probably safe to say that if the people running the sale had known then what they know now – namely, the depths to which some people will go to get their mitts on a bargain – they might never have opened those gates that morning. But they did open them, of course. And when they did, as the AP reported, “it became a terrifying mob scene.”

A photo of the laptop-fueled stampede calls to mind those images we’ve all seen of thrill-seekers being chased by bulls through the streets of Pamplona, Spain. There are people being trampled on the ground, people shoving one another, people waving their arms wildly as they hurtle toward the open gates.

“I could not move, I could not breathe,” said one young woman who lost a flip-flop in the melee and had to continue her bargain-hunting on one bare foot. “This is chaos, total chaos.”

The crowd surged toward the inexpensive computers, pushing and screaming. The police showed up but were quickly overwhelmed and had to call for backup to contain the manic masses. An elderly man reportedly was thrown to the pavement by fellow shoppers and someone actually tried to make his way to the front of the line by driving his car through the throng.

One young man, boldly asserting his right to possess used and outdated consumer electronics at any cost, used a folding chair to beat back people who tried to cut in front of him. A similarly obsessed woman went so far as to wet her pants right there in public rather than give up her place in line.

Not counting the four people who required hospital treatment and the dozen or so others who suffered minor injuries, the sale went well. All the computers were gone by 1 p.m. A county official said he thought it quite strange, however, that used laptops could cause such a frenzy, especially since the computers “probably have less-than-desirable attributes.”

Much like some of the knuckleheads who now own them, don’t you think?