[LINK] Laptop program hailed

[Fernando Cassia]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 23:59, Philip Argy <pargy at argystar.com> wrote:
> OLPC people are genuine, and their
> achievements phenomenal, with only a shoestring budget and the brilliant
> little XO devices.  Please do NOT confuse this programme with the
> Government's high school laptop project, which is something totally
> different!

Down here in Argentina at the other side of the globe, I can relate to
the above comments.

The "powers that be" (I´ll let you fill in the blanks) quickly started
a smear and FUD campaign against OLPC after the project was announced,
and we ended up with the government in Argentina buying millions of
INTEL CLASSMATE laptops, preloaded with Windows... for secondary
education.

Yet, OLPC XOs have been making inroads at public schools (primary
education aka elementary in US) in one lone province, with great
success.

The problem with OLPC XO?. Local manufacturers (assembly) of laptops
get no contracts (they build Intel Classmates), Microsoft´s subsidiary
gets no contracts for the OS, and the company that provides anti-theft
software gets no contracts (as it´s Windows-based).

So, in a nutshell, OLPC XOs are too good, and too cheap, and leave a
lot of commercial interets out of the picture. Now ask yourself why
secondary schools get Intel Classmates with Windows in Argentina... a
lot more pockets get money than by going OLPC.

FC