The Network is the Computer
A small startup in Chennai, India is taking a lesson out of this famous quote and bringing computing to the masses. They are providing a computing service with the actual computer costing as low as $100 with a monthly subscription fee of $10!
The computer is a quite stripped down PC based diskless client. Each customer gets access to either Ubuntu Linux or Windows with 2GB of storage space (to start with) on the company's server. IMHO this is an excellent utilization of existing time-tested technology to bridge the digital divide.
See the company's website http://www.novatium.com/ for more details.