Venezuela is ordering one million low cost laptops for its school children. The machines will be based on the Intel Classmate laptop that has been designed for school children.
Venezuela is buying the portable computers as part of a $3bn (£1.66bn) bilateral trade deal with Portugal that also covers housing and utilities.
Portugal is manufacturing the laptops under licence from Intel and are broadly based on the chip maker’s design of its Classmate computer.
Dubbed Magellan, the laptops will have on board low-power Intel Atom chips designed for laptops. They will also sport digital cameras and a broadband net connection. As an operating system, the machines will run a version of Linux developed in Venezuela.
The trick here is that the Portuguese government got the license from Intel and set up manufacturing to supply these critters to 500,000 of their own school children. Looks like someone was smart enough to understand they might further defray expenses by producing an excess for export.
How long before we see these in Best Buy?
That is one fugly laptop. I wouldn’t take it if you GAVE it to me.
Nice. Hugo buying products licensed by the evil U.S.A.
More likely to turn up on eBay before Best Buy !!!
My son is eligible for one.
Celeron 900, 30Gb Hd, 512 Ram
Subsidized: 25 Euros.
Wouldn’t you get one???
file under: Wow Portugal is in the news
#2 – Nice #2, living in the USA and accepting charity from Chavez in the form of heating oil. WTG.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101163.html
#6 – green – Unfortunately, it’s not hard to make Bush look bad.
#5
Yeah!
That WAS my first reaction…
#4, Joao,
Look like a great deal. Of course #9, peedro is happy with his kids using a piece of slate and chalk.
US school children will never get anything like this. Dick Cheney’s kind doesn’t think they need to be overly educated. Cause US kids might end up not enlisting in the Army, to get paid slightly better than flipping hamburgers for a job. It’s called an economic draft, and it starts by restricting education funding. That’s why US kids are behind the rest of the world. Learning too much, lowers the enlistment rate.