Low-cost laptops to reach students in Brazil

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday will distribute the first batch of laptops to school students in the country, as part of the international project A Computer Per Student.

The project, aimed at providing low-cost laptops for children in developing countries, was proposed by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States..

The non-profit group One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is in charge of producing the computers at a cost of 100 U.S. dollars.

On Friday, Negroponte, also chairman of the OLPC, met President Lula to symbolically launch the program in the country.

The computers will be distributed to students at primary and secondary schools, who will be able to take them home and use with their families.

Initially, the computers will not be for sale in the country. The coordinator of the local government program Computers For All, Cesar Alvarez, will negotiate with the OLPC to have the laptops for sale in the country..

The OLPC intended to sell a million laptops in Brazil, but it said that orders have to reach up to 5 million units, from one or more countries, so that the production at such a cost is viable.

Argentina, Nigeria, Libya and Thailand also take part in the project.

Source: Xinhua