14 DAY TRIAL // The One Laptop Per Child, OLPC for short, has been mulling over its super cheap, uber cool laptop for a number of years now and after a number of setbacks and near total failures alongside with many price tag boosts and other problems, things are finally looking brighter for the outfit led by Nicholas Negromponte.
Their program to allow customers from the United States and Europe to buy OLPC XO laptops at a double price in order to help fund the campaign seems to be working and more importantly a developing country just sent a clear message to the world by choosing the XO over another competing design. Uruguay announced that after the evaluation program of several low cost mobile computer systems that are aimed at providing the informational backbone of its schools, it has chosen the XO machine.
The OLPC foundation is not the only outfit that is interested in providing the developing world with access to informational technologies as Intel developed its own low cost computing platform, the Classmate PC that is available at a pretty low cost. Unlike the OLPC's motives, Intel is in the business of selling computer hardware parts and it is aiming at the developing world in order to increase its revenues.
Both the Intel Classmate PC and the OLPC XO laptop faced a number of trials by LATU Uruguay, the organization responsible for the informational infrastructure in that country. After the completion of said trials, the XO machine was declared the winner as it received a score of 65.84 while the Intel Classmate PC managed a lower 53.06 mark.
''Now the findings are not official yet, as all the bidders have five days to contest the process, but this is a stunning upset for Intel and a resounding confirmation for OLPC. LATU will be purchasing 100,000 laptops for children, with an option to buy 50,000 more, at $199 per laptop'', can be read on the official OLPC news site.
While the XO and the Classmate PC are pretty similar from the functionality point of view, they are two distinct platforms as the XO is based on the AMD Geode central processing unit that is less pricey than the Intel processor fitted inside the Classmate PC.