Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Classmate, Intel, Portugal, OLPC, XO | Themes: Business, Business Notebooks, Laptops and Notebooks
It’s bad news for Nicholas Negroponte as news emerges of a deal between Portugal and OLPC competitor Intel.
Yesterday it was announced that Intel had signed a deal to provide 500,000 of its Classmate PCs to Portuguese school children between the ages of six and 10. The contract brings Intel almost level with OLPC’s XO laptop which so far, has only shipped just over 600,000 units.
The deal is part of an education technology program called the Magellan Initiative, launched by Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates and Intel Chairman Craig Barrett.
"This new collaboration with Intel underscores Portugal’s commitment to advance quickly toward a knowledge-based economy," Sócrates said. "By equipping our schools with state-of-the-art computing technology and Internet connectivity, we hope to hasten the transition to economic models that benefit our citizens."
This time last year Intel jumped on board the OLPC ship but announced its departure from the project in January, citing “philosophical differences.”
What followed was a lot of back and forth he said/she said. According to Intel, OLPC was unhappy with the company developing its own low-cost PC. Intel also claimed OLPC had accused the company of pushing its own Classmate PC to governments of developing nations in favour of the XO laptop. In an interview with the BBC, Nicholas Negroponte compared Intel’s behaviour to that of adultery or alcoholism.
"Each time it happened they said they would correct their ways. It’s a little like cheating on your spouse, or alcoholism, or something you just can’t eventually fix and we had to finally part ways."
Given the history, the deal no doubt rubs salt in the wound for OLPC. The computers are expected to roll out in the 2008-2009 school year and according to the Associated Press, prices will depend on the income of each family but won’t exceed €50 ($78). Parents can also choose whether or not they want to have their child’s laptop running Windows or Linux and it’ll be interesting to see which OS is the more popular choice.
-
Previous News Article
Wordscraper: The Scrabulous... -
Next News Article
iPhone 2.1 Firmware Update...
i kinda disagree with this deal. kids from 6 to 10 need to learn emocional and social skills, and not technology-based knowledge..
its always funny to see the right money going to the wrong hands (not)..
It's not a bad deal for OLPC, it's a bad deal for the Portuguese children.
Each Classmate is costing $400 to the Portuguese tax payers, they could have gotten twice as many laptops, 1 million OLPC XO laptops, for the same price of $200 million.
I guess Portuguese politicians don't have a problem paying more for less.
They should build better schools and recover the old ones IMO. If Portugal wants to go forward kids need to use computers from a young age, it doesn't matter if they are expensive, I only hope they use them to learn and not to play all the time.
Portugal should have a recycling program for computers, I wouldn't mind giving my old rig or some hardware to a school or something.
BTW I'm Portuguese.
With a nickname like that, i'd never guess
i agree with that parcially. kids need to use technology to be more competitive grown-ups. and giving computers to younglings acts as a tool for that purpose.
But you being portuguese surely know that portuguese kids (at least, that young..) lack the responsibility to put that technology to good use.. you know what happened with the laptop school project. the one that mobile-phone companies launched alltogether to bring cheap laptops to high-school kids. (projecto e-escolas)
it was just a matter of time till a great deal of laptops were inoperable with viruses, missuse or simply stolen or damaged beyond repair...
Also IMO, that just doesn't make sense to kids THAT young. they need all the time they have to play football with the kids next door, or to practice some other sport, or to read good books.. i totally support this concept: that working people SHOULD at least learn the basics of how to work with a computer, but this measure may be even more damaging than not learning that.
where are u from?
@Portuguese Lisboa
About Projecto e-escolas, Kids will always be kids, but I'm sure some of them did use the laptops for study, maybe those few will help the country in a near future, at least I hope so!
About Viruses and missuse, well I did learn to use computers the hard way and did had some problems with those, but these days I build my rigs and I'm happy that I had to install my OS so many times!
You are right, portuguese kids do lack the responsibility, I think the problem goes all the way to the family.
Kids want things these days, fashion victims IMO, so parents give them "tech toys" to balance the few time they spend with them. Most kids don't know what work is and the problems one needs to overcome to have enough money for the basic things in life. Parents work their ass off to buy expensive stuff for their kids, its a never-ending cycle of stupidity, "buy buy buy" to make kids happy because they suck as parents, if they don't teach their own kids to have responsability over a simples laptop how can they teach them to build a family or create a company.
Anyway in the middle of all those kids some will become teachers, doctors, experts, etc. IMO It's better to spend in culture than spend money with those that don't want to work and even so receive money from the tax payers, sorry about the offtopic.
Anyway Portuguese you are right about the sports, but that also goes back to the family :-) some Portuguese are just lazy as hell XD
I hated to do sports in school and now I got a work that makes sports look easy. Life is funny!