The XO Laptop Goes to Uruguay

The XO laptop won a bid for 100,000 laptops for the schools in Uruguay. The laptops will be given through the Ceibal project, started by the Uruguayan government.

LATU (Laboratorio Tecnologico del Uruguay - The Technological Laboratory of Uruguay) received the report from the committee adjudicating the bid and the score was in favor of the XO laptop which scored 56.84 points while the Intel Classmate got only 53.06.

In addition to the original number of 100,000 computers included in the bid, there's an option for another 50,000 and for several hundreds of servers, which are in a separate call for bids. Grupo Positivo de Brasil presented the Intel systems, while Brightstar Uruguay had the units designed by Nicholas Negroponte's group. Both units (Intel Classmate and XO laptop) are made in China.

The government's intention is to begin distributing the laptops in schools before the end of this year and to give them to all the schools in the country until the end of the current administration. The groups started the bid with XO's price of $199 and Intel's unit cost of $274. At the end of the bidding process, the XO went down to $199 and the Intel machines to $258.

Brightstar's offer will include teacher training and tech support and an additional 1% supply of machines for replacing the damaged ones. Also, the design allows for parts that can be replaced by the children themselves. Uruguay's inclusion in the OLPC program was obtained after convincing Nicholas Negroponte that it was easier to apply the project in a small country with a relatively sparse population.

The XO laptop doesn't have a hard disk and uses open-source software. It is very light (weighs approximately 1.5 kilograms), it's shock-, dust-resistant and waterproof. The machine was first presented at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis at the end of 2005.

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