News On Laptops For Education

AdamWill notes a Mandriva press release with the news that the government of Nigeria has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running Mandriva Linux for educational use in a nationwide pilot. About 17,000 machines will be involved at first. We can only wonder at the maneuvering and negotiations that went on with the OLPC project. The latter had its first announced order for 100,000 XO machines, from Uruguay, with a potential for 400,000 over time. The bigger news out of OLPC is that Microsoft is porting XP to the platform, and chairman Nicholas Negroponte says that's fine with him: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

I ask for your advice

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got an email from son of the former Education Minister of Nigeria.
In the mail he states that he has recently acquired 17000 classmate laptops
(seventeen thousand US laptops) and he is trying to get them out of the country.
He is asking for my assistance and I shall be rewarded greatly (5000 laptops).
To cover up the expenses he is asking me to send five Packard Bell notebooks
with Windows Vista Home Premium.

What should I do? Is this some kind of scam?

Re:I ask for your advice

[sammyF70]

I'd be carefull if it didn't have any spelling errors in the mail body. Legit offers of that types are recognized by at least 3 typos or grammatical errors/paragraph.

I have a bad feeling about this

[eln]

I don't know if I like how this project is being rolled out. For example, the Nigerian government has said they will pay for these laptops with part of the proceeds from a bank account containing $500,000,000 left by a rich oil baron who was killed in a car accident and left no heir. However, they are asking Negroponte to pose as this guy's heir, and also to give them a few thousand dollars for documentation fees and the like. I just don't see this thing turning out well.

Re:Why not Vista??

[BUL2294]

Are you serious? Even Microsoft knows better than to submit 3rd-world kids to "the wow is now..."

Check the specs from http://www.classmatepc.com/ [classmatepc.com] ... 900Mhz, 0 L2 (prominently featured on the page for some reason), 256MB RAM, 1 or 2GB flash, 800x480 screen. Somehow the 2GB version incredibly manages to fit XP Pro (why Pro?) and MS-Office.

Vista would look at this configuration and show a screen of Bill Gates laughing at the user. Hell I doubt even M$ could trim Vista down enough to run in such a configuration, given the bloated piece of crap Vista is. (I wonder what Vista's "experience rating" would be--0.2?)

Heh...

[Otter]

Between here and Reddit, I probably picked up 50 negative moderation points during 2007 for daring to question OLPC's predictions of 13 jillion computers shipped by year's end. (The fact that Nicholas Negroponte seemed completely oblivious to whether the governments with whom he had shaky agreements (Thaksin, Hamas) were even still in power was a tipoff.)

I predict that 2008 will provide similar opportunities to bleed karma; also, it's going to be The Year Of Linux On The Desktop!

I predict:

[E. Edward Grey]

In 10 years, every IT department is going to say "Why buy Windows servers, when I can get a free or nearly free server OS that's more stable, run it on cheaper hardware with half the horsepower, and hire a Nigerian immigrant who knows it inside and out to administer it?"

Re:I predict:

[tzhuge]

Also: "Why use grid power, when that same Nigerian immigrant can hand crank that server?" Server admins typing with one hand will be even more standard than it is now.