No state should be forced to make a Solomon-like decision between laptops and books for their students. Yet that is what appears to be taking place this year in Texas. The Texas state legislature has proposed a new law to outfit all secondary students with laptops at an estimated cost of $707.7 million over the next two years, according to Craig Tounget, executive director of the Texas Parents and Teachers Association. The problem is, textbooks that should have arrived in Texas classrooms for the 2004-2005 school year have been collecting dust in warehouses because the legislature has deferred paying the $327 million publisher's tab. While lawmakers have now agreed to fund those books, the $378 million that was slotted for textbooks for the 2006-2007 school year is being postponed instead. This article briefly describes the details of this situation in Texas.