And they're going to get that through Windows, Wikipedia and You Tube, are they?

nothing more, nothing less... business as usual for chipzilla

the classmate can run 'normal' linux and windows versions instead of some cockamamie thing like the XO on the OLPC where you can't even find your files ...

It took OLPC a while to figure out that nobody wants some weird user interface that has nothing on common with the rest of the world... and to 'rectify' tis small oversight they had to scramble back to windows..

If someone should be ashamed it is Negroponte , not intel. I wonder what pulled him back to the Windows stable.. probably a large stack of little green pieces of paper ...

Ashamed of themselves? Its business.. whether it comes from MIT or Intel. You want to save the children? how about feeding them. Oh look another poor developing world kid starved to death.. but heshe did have a nice laptop.

And uhhh since when was Portugal a developing country? Its like not calling Pluto a planet just because it's small. errrr yeah.

Hmmm , nothing like the old baksheesh and you scratch my back for the one cent in the dollar I throw into your future retirement pot to oil the government rubber stampers is there !

Or gee , just look another half a million zombies about to go progressively live on the net too !

It seems that politicians still believe that throwing a lot of machines to the people will create a "knowledge based" economy (whatever that is).

What about IT infrastructure, people who take care of it, user education?

A lot of tools will only be that, and for them to be productive there are a lot of things that must go with them.

Without those *previous* steps, this will be just another press release for Intel and a easy way for Portuguese politicians to lure some voters.

R

The whole OLPC program has been going nowhere for the past five years. So now one country is finally tired of waiting and is implementing their own low cost laptops for education and OLPC is crying foul. I'll admit Im not knowledgeable on the details of this, but it just strikes me as ridiculous. If someone can counter my claim that is ridiculous and tell me how OLPC is being wronged, Id like to hear it.

---"You want to save the children? how about feeding them. Oh look another poor developing world kid starved to death.. but heshe did have a nice laptop."---

The problem is that the majority of the worlds population are subsistance farmers and the land can no longer support that kind of destructive low yield farming. It is possible for industrialized nations to go in to all of the third world nations and set up commercial farming operations that would provide an over abundance of food, and that actually might not be a bad idea. But I dont see any third world nations calling for such aid, because they want to be self sufficient. That is something you dont understand unless you know what it is like to be poor. The answer to all the worlds problems is EDUCATION. I do agree with you that laptops are not a priority in extremely poor third world nations but rather developing nations, they should be integrated into educational system and not merely just given to a child/family.

There is something to the old saying "give a person a fish, they eat for a day. teach them to fish, they will eat for a lifetime"

"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish and you'll never see the bugger again.."

Um last I checked Portugal was not exactly a 3rd world poverty stricken country

The problem here is not Intel, it's the OLPC failure to provide what they promised: $100 laptop for children. They delivered a laptop almost double priced, well in reach from Intel's more capable offering. And then they slammed windows on it, as if it would help...

As for the Portuguese contract, they key driver was the local production of the machine. With lagging economics, the Portuguese government just couldn't resist a PR stunt like this one. But it is only fair to say this e-school program was already active, for older students and teachers, with full featured laptops.

Wonder how long before some enterprising Portuguese start a sideline in these on ebay with region customisable keyboards and other components? :)

---"Um last I checked Portugal was not exactly a 3rd world poverty stricken country"---

Um, youre right its not....and so? Your point is that low cost laptops should not be used in education for developing countries but only in poverty stricken third world countries?

For me, countries fall into 3 basic classes:

1)Fully industrialized nations like the US, France, Japan, etc

2)Developing nations like China, India, Mexico, etc

3)Poor third world nations like most countries in Africa, etc

These low cost laptops will be most effective in developing nations by integrating them into the educational system. I think they should be distributed in communities within poor third world nations, but one for every child will be of little use unless there is an educational program to go along with it.

The idea of low cost laptops goes way beyond third world outreach, it will become a part of the worlds educational system. If Negroponte cant except that, thats too bad.

I think that is about to happen, this is why the stage was set by the head banker calling a food crisis.

They have to sell up some of there land, and allow western companies in to produce food, ironic really as the UK is one of the most arable locations in the world.

If that happens, they need to educate to work in the industrial farm complexes, and computers will do just that, I don't think they will get much net access, just a load of basic programs and a load of manuals on a disk. The manuals will be on how to work in industrial farm complexes.

It will be just like this:

http://www.themeatrix.com/

but obviously not in our backyards.