Uruguay becomes first nation to provide a laptop for every primary school student
By Darren Murph 
posted October 18th 2009 12:29PM
posted October 18th 2009 12:29PM
[Via Digg, image courtesy of oso]
posted October 18th 2009 12:29PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
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5%? Wow, well done!
LAN tournament anyone?
LAN tournament of what, Pong?
My kid's school has Macbook G4's and new Dells that can easily run most games that require Pentium II, 256 MB ram (or more) without an accelerator card.
They can run Half Life, Quake 2, Command & Conquer, Falcon 4.0 and of course DOOM and DUKE NUKEM 3D.
And of course, they have network switches lying around...
@whitecollarcriminal you mean POWERbook G4 ?
They could do a lan tournament of the game Assault Cube. That game is fun and low sys requirement
@Hey
No he meant iBook G4
those things are plenty powerful enough to play Starcraft. it probably runs fine under WINE.
*nix rocks. Imagine a world with a lot less security issues. Let the Microsofty Fannie Boy downgrade begin!
@Ghen,
The peace sign you're talking about is extensively used by people from Eastern Asian nations that most simply simply tag as "Asians". They use that hand gesture like they'd be taxed if they don't...
Sorry but Portugal was first!
In Portugal, the Prime Minister, José Sócrates, already did that last year, by delivering thousands of laptops called "Magalhães" to primary school students...
@ Paradox
In Portugal, they delivered laptops called "Magalhães" to every primary school, not to every single student, which is what Uruguay did
Those damn Uruguay kids and their gang signs.
Paraguay will be pissed when it sees it.
What a crappy Hand-Gesture. I guess Uruguay.
Nike?
If it is, I think the girl got it wrong :P
Hands up, guns out representin that world town
The gesture is shared between Uruguay and Argentina, is a way of sayin' I'm cool with this stuff. It's also used to brag about and it's part of "gesture slang" that has become universal regardless social class.
Everyone knows what that means 'round here, the hand used is not important since what the gesture actually is showing is the face of the performer, as saying 'Hey, how cool I am'. It is funny cause is more often used ironically (the brag is often uncalled for, like when you suck dancing and say "I can do it like this because I'm so cool" implying that you already know you're a loser, but you don't give a damn)
So its like when in America we do the peace sign for photos?
that hand gesture actually means half of a frame when posing for a camera. It's a world wide social thing your nerd-self can't comprehend. pix after the break - > http://www.photography101.org/images/handframe.jpg
It is also rooted to a series of Colgate commercials that were aired in the 90s. The hand is supposed to frame your smile and white teeth. "Dales una sonrisa Colgate" Give them a Colgate smile. As states earlier, it also also used ot say cool. Like when you use your two hands, point them as guns, and make that noise with your mouth "tkt" to hit on a girl... well, if you have ever hit on a girl...
No, it is not.
This hand gesture is widely used in Uruguay and Argentina and it have a lot of meaning, for example "rescatate loco!".
ps :El bananero soy yo :-P
Looks like "Shocker Lite" or "One Shocker per Child".
why dont you go over their and show them a cooler hand sign u learned from Napoliean Dynamite..
I agree, it looks like the "this person is a dick" hand gesture
It is a hand gesture that represent a mustache but in reverse. You put it of course down your nose and it means like "cool" but in a more exaggerated way.
Only those who have lived in Argentina or Uruguay can really appreciate that picture. I was there for two years and seeing that gesture again just made me smile. Thanks, Engadget.
Now if only we could do this in America.. we could easy do this on 5% of the budget, or divert 5% from things that absolutely don't do anything but waste money in the education budget. And if they're made here in the US, it could also stimulate the economy to hire people to assemble the millions of laptops required.
Or we can just give a bunch of banks money for their bonuses, whatever.
maybe divert some of that war/oil money
if we do like you say, then we should have some company like coca cola donate them since they provide all the refreshments on every school campus. then again, the kids probably wouldn't want to such a low end pc,
Since when do grade-school kids need laptops? I'm in college and I don't even need one! Most kids spend their time playing games / movies during lectures anyway.
Yeah because these are really made in the USA.
American fingers are too chubby for laptop assembly.
Well said. But, unfortunately I highly-doubt OLPC or even a gov't program like this would even get one foot in Washington DC without some cable news networks yelling that it's "Socialized Education"
or maybe delay those two or three uav's another month :/
We Americans also have standards, ya know. Standards higher than those OLPCs can ever possibly dream of.
Processor has to be at least 2GHz and better than Pentium 4, 4GB RAM, GeForce processor over 9000 (oh no he did-unt), 1080p screen, hybrid HDTV tuner, Windows 7 Ultimate without any hitches, etc.
Just so you know Tubes, we already have a significant amount of money in education. Technically it IS socialized for most people (funded by, controlled in part by the Federal government), but that's beside the point. Z made a great point by saying DIVERTING funds from another educational task that is doing nothing to the laptop initiative. Unfortunately, that would never happen as: 1) laptops as a necessity is debatable, we already have attention span problems, and 2) the Federal government tends to just make another line item for this type of thing instead of diverting funds.
Instead of lambasting someone for having a problem with the spending and power of the Federal government, I'd try to look into their reasoning and learn some history.
America doesn't need this. The 'poor' in america are, by the standards of the rest of the civilized world, middle class. They can afford their own laptop/ netbook.
It's merely a matter of priorities. Parents need to feel that a laptop for their child is more important the the big SUV, the latest cellphone, the big screen TV, and the latest clothes. And yes, I'm still talking about the poor. If you think the majority of what the government calls 'poor' in america are living hand to mouth, you need to get a taste of reality.
5% of the US budget would buy high end Macbook Pros or liquid cooled Crossfire/SLI Core i7 gaming computers for every primary school student
It's been deployed in some pilot schools in USA already, and it's a huge success, a whole city has got one for each child, it's Birmingham Alabama.
@Tubes
You're saying we don't have socialized education already?
Last time I checked K-12 education was provided by the state
Computers ≠ education. Giving a bunch of kids in America free laptops isn't going to accomplish a damn thing.
Sorry but the problem isn't that we have socialized education in America, but that compared to the rest of the western world our socialized education system sucks ass while theres is superb and costs less. The problem is our political system is broke. Every nuance of public policy is written by greedy corporate lobbyists while the bulk of Americans are to f'n stupid to know what a lobbyist even is, or care... talk about epic fail, America is the poster child for it!
What about Portugal and Magalhães?
I think Uruguay gave them for free, which is better than paying, no matter how cheap it is, and thus everyone gets one.
The magalhães, a.k.a. Intel Classmate 2 has been theoretically handed out to all kids. Problem is, some kids got their computers and after they bhad been filmed they had to put them back in the package.
Even though it's a major logistical failure, I'm pretty sure Uruguay is FAR BEHIND Portugal.
Besides, the Intel Classmates are more powerful than that thing.
That thing is much more powerful than the Intel Classmate.
1. Battery power consumption is 10x lower than Intel Classmate.
2. Readable outdoors
3. WiFi Meshing means no hotspot problems for all pupils to share data and collaborate
OLPC has XO-1.5 coming out with a VIA processor that's probably about as "powerful" as the Intel netbooks yet still much cheaper and better overall.
Portugal did not get any Classmate laptops yet. OLPC has delivered more than 1.2 Million laptops for real and the Children are using them everyday.
Have you even read anything about the OLPC? It uses a freaking AMD Geode processor, not a VIA C7, that's the future version. You'd better read the specifications, because the OLPC XO-1 is much less powerful than a Classmate, which is a run-of-the-mill netbook. Sure, the green one can be abused like there's no tomorrow and still work, but for a cvilized country the classmate is far better.
Wow, the Internet Hive-Mind absorbs an entire country!
Did India screw their uber-cheap laptop initiative and opt for the XO? I kinda lost track of that movement.
The india initiative was some combination of a mistranslation, and/or a deception, and/or grossly unrealistic expectations.
After XO wanted to be the first sub-$100 laptop, and clocked in around $180, Some Indian group decided they would make a $10-12 laptop. Then, they hemmed and hawed a few times, re-estimated the costs up, and changed the actual hardware specs.
What the ended up with is a small desktop box costing around $70-80 that is a lot like the Geode reference designs AMD made. You need to plug it in, and bring your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor. How this would be useful for students who can't afford a computer to start with is beyond me.
Well, that's just sad.
I hope the authorities there wise up and provide the kids with actual hardware like the XO.