OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay

Acer500 writes "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project. From the newspaper articles: 'The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'" More information below. According to the unofficial blog of the Uruguayan project, named proyecto Ceibal, the infrastructure for wireless is not yet in place but will be provided in the next few days by the national telco ANTEL. No photos of the event have been posted online, but you can see an institutional video on Youtube. One interesting point is that it has not yet been decided that the XO will be the laptop of choice for the entire project. Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC, and Israeli-manufactured ITP-C. In a press conference, Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP. As advisor and local guru Juan Grompone stated, 'who will ultimately benefit from this is education?' This will be an interesting test to see if the OLPC project meets its intended goals of 'learning learning'. Let's hope this project is the means that will foster among some of the children the desire to learn and to tinker."

Comments

Re:Intel making a play....

[TheRaven64]

It doesn't seem to get mentioned a lot, but one of the secondary aims of the project is that countries should not buy very many of the units. If they are a success, it is hoped that they will start manufacturing their own. The designs are available royalty-free, and so is all of the software. The only thing you need to reproduce it is a supply of the components, and many of these can be produced locally if there is a demand. The core ICs are about the only components that will need to be imported, and if there's enough of a need then setting up a chip fab might be in the country's best interests.

The OLPC project hasn't just been sold as an educational tool to politicians, it's also been sold as an economic one.

Re:Which way to go, Intel or AMD?

[Zouden]

Not only is it more than twice the price, the Classmate PC is vastly inferior. Let me list the ways (stats taken from Wikipedia):

-XO has a 1200x900 screen which can be flipped around (tablet style) and converted into ultra-high resolution grayscale for displaying text. The refresh rate can automatically adjust (down to 0hz) to save battery power. The Classmate PC has an ordinary 800x480 LCD.
-XO has a camera. Classmate doesn't. This article shows that the kids obviously like the camera.
-XO has a large trackpad that can be used as a graphics tablet. Classmate has a standard trackpad.
-XO operating system interface was designed from the ground up for this purpose. Classmate uses Windows XP Embedded.
-XO promotes the concept of Free software. Classmate has a freakin' Trusted Computing Module installed!