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:Which way to go, Intel or AMD?

[catiger]

I don't know if you are just a fan of OLPC or an employee working on OLPC. let me update you on following facts:

about performance: OLPC uses AMD Geode CPU at 366 MHz while CMPC runs at Intel Celeron Mobile 900 MHz. so who's the really winner?

about resolution: You must know, if you know a bit of tech, that LCD screen size matters much more than its resolution, while screen size largely determines the BOM price. What OLPC uses is either 7' or 9' LCD while Classmate PC offers both and support a variety of resolution from 800*480 to 1024*768...but all computer literate people would know a larger resolution on the 7' or 9' screen will make fonts look rather too smaller to be read or making eyeballs very painful eventually.

about operating system: Classmate PC supports both worlds from ground up: Linux and Windows XP Pro

about trusting platform module: I don't know why you are so freaked about TPM... like an ancient man were afraid of morden weapons. but you must be fair to understand its usage. To my knowledge TPM is not used for DRM sorts of thing but for anti-theft purpose since a kid carrying a mobile laptop is so vulnerable to thieves and robbers in the street.

Re:Go

[bberens]

What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams. Ahh the hopes and dreams of every Uruguayan child can now finally be realized. To think that every child has the opportunity of opening their very own child pornography website brings a little crocodile tear to my eye. This is a moment we should all cherish.

/seriously, how did no one else catch that?