One Laptop Per Child News

Interesting. It looks like Portugal realized the original Classmate for the dog that it is. Look at the upgrade they're getting soon:

The first round of the Classmate PC laptops for Portugal will use Intel's older Celeron processor before switching to a new batch manufactured with the newer Atom chip, said Lila Ibrahim, general manager of the Intel's Emerging Markets Platform Group.

The newer Classmate PC design also allows for a number of extras that were unavailable in the older designs, such as hard disk drives with a 30GB capacity. Other features include more RAM—512MB compared with the previous 256MB in the older models—and it will support Microsoft Windows, as well as the Metasys and Ubuntu Linux operating systems.

The Classmate also now offers a 9-inch display, compared with the older 7-inch display model.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Intel-Classmate-PCs-Head-to-Portugal/

I think is a good thing -> More competition == BETTER

@Wayan,

Considering that these machines are for educational use and are sure to be dropped, I really don't see how including a hd is a plus.

@jose,

But was this really the outcome of open competition, or did it happen because Intel used trickery, political influence, and perhaps bribes?

Along these lines, it would be really nice if some well-qualified organization did a comparison of pc versus xo as in action in the classrooms where they are being used.

Eduardo,

I agree, HD isn't the best, but at least there is a general upgrade from the Classmate 1.

And I am very, very concerned about the lack of clarity around this whole agreement. I just spoke with a reporter from Portugal and he confirmed my suspicion - there wasn't an open competition. Portugal just up and announced the Intel partnership. Both educational and government advisory.

The two together with such secrecy should produce a great public concern in Portugal.

This PC was not chosen because of bribery from Intel and it was not chosen by the government at all, it was chosen by a Portuguese company called JP Sá Couto that will assembly the computers in Portugal (creating lots of jobs there). When the government heard they were planning to sell this computers they asked JP Sá Couto if they could join the program and subsidized the computers to give them (or pay a maximum of 50€) to all the children from the first 4 grades of school - of course JP Sá Couto gladly acepted the offer because they don't have to promote it to sell thousands.
And it will run Linux (it already did during the presentation), Caixa Mágica a portuguese disto of linux.
Moral of this story: before falsely accusing your competitors try to research a little bit, it won't hurt and your site will be a more reliable source of news.

Miguel,

OLPC News is amazing because of contributions like yours. None of us would have known about this backstory without your help and input. Your comments prove what we suggested earlier, and Negroponte dismissed as irrelevant:

Local assembly jobs matter. And OLPC's China-only production is a detriment, regardless of price: http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/production/local_olpc_assembly_justification.html

I am not sure anymore if the Classmate deal is worse than the XO for developed countries like Portugal.

A couple of points:

- The Classmate will be available to anyone with at least 1 year of guarantee and will have spare parts afterwards. I still can't buy a replacement keyboard for my sticky-key-ridden XO and apart from the G1G1 I couldn't buy a factory-new XO.

- The Classmate will cost less than the G1G1 price (400USD) for which you can buy an XO. Never mind what Negroponte says about XO production costs, nobody can buy it for that price (~USD 180) so it is irrelevant.

- The new, 9inch classmate screen cannot be used for ebook-mode but is much bigger than the XO screen (7.5inch). PDF-s and other content will be easier to read. Likely, you won't be able to use it in sunlight but in developed schools you sit in a room not in sunlight.

- Due to the 512Mb RAM, Ubuntu will be easy to install&use (even Edubuntu for kids) and will likely support suspend & hibernate. The stock Intel chipsets are very well supported by Linux and Ubuntu has special support for the Atom processor and chipset (see Ubuntu Netbook Remix). The Atom processor beats the hell out of the Geode any time so Ubuntu will likely provide a better user experience on the classmate than on the current XO.

- We don't have too sophisticated power management for the XO currently, so hard to compare them fairly. Even though the Classmate will have a short battery life, currently my XO drains its battery even if it is completely shut down (EC power consumption still not fixed). Currently, I have to remove the battery of the XO if I don't want to get it completely drained in max a week. So: if the classmate can correctly suspend and hibernate like a normal laptop, it may be easier to use than the current XO even with 2 hours of battery runtime.

- The mesh network of the XO is nice but from a practical 1st word point of view:
1)at home, it is illegal to share your internet connection with others and in Europe you may get prosecuted for it.
2) In a school which runs a laptop program, the correct AP coverage makes it unnecessary anyway. Every XO can connect to simply an Access Point.

So unfortunately, the advantages of the XO over the are growing very thin if not negative at this time.

1)at home, it is illegal to share your internet connection with others and in Europe you may get prosecuted for it.

see: http://web2.justiz.hessen.de/migration/rechtsp.nsf/491DC84480D45962C12574810037C35A/$file/11u05207.pdf

(sorry it's in german. the basic idea is, no it is not illegal)

1)at home, it is illegal to share your internet connection with others and in Europe you may get prosecuted for it.

oh and by the way. sharing an internet connection cannot and will never be illegal. it is however often thought to be illegal when someone makes an unlicensed copy of a work.

And the Classmate 3 gets better by the day. It seems that Portugal's Classmate will have Atom processors running at 1.6Ghz and 1GB of RAM.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/149141/2008/07/.html

I may just have to reverse my opinion on Intel's 4PC hardware game.

miguel,

"When the government heard they were planning to sell this computers they asked JP Sá Couto if they could join the program and subsidized the computers to give them (or pay a maximum of 50€) to all the children from the first 4 grades of school"

what has been reported is that in fact the maximum cost of 50€, however, was also said this program has the support of Portuguese mobile operators and everything indicates that work equal to the "escola"(e-school) program, if so the initial value of 50€ must be added the cost of Internet connection with binding contract of 36 months, when the figures presented in the "e-escola" will be 17.30€ /month, or 622.80 €!
beyond this little "detail" I must mention the following:
- has been reported that the laptop is 100% Portuguese, which is not true!
- speaking in the exportation of the "100% Portuguese laptop" when this is a Intel product. under what conditions it will be "exported"?
- was reported as being the "global launch"!
- although this programme create new jobs in Portugal, also creates unemployment, since the laptop market of free selling have suffered a huge decline with the "e-escola"
- this program clearly will favor a private company, JP Sá Couto, and it will damage all other companies in the informatics distribuition sector in Portugal.

regards,
ruicosta

@Miguel,

In your post you make no mention of the government evaluating the educational merits of the two competing computers. So may we assume that the decision was made entirely for commercial and financial reasons?

The company that will assemble the Magalhães classmate computers is JP Sá Couto, who did a huge favour to Microsoft by joining (without any discernible motive) the portuguese ISO technical committee 173 and blindly vote in favour of Microsoft OOXML.

Recently they also had a partnership with Microsoft.

Vote in favour of OOXML and suddenly you get lot's of interesting deals...

Or maybe it's just a coincidence...