...from: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/apr07/04-19UPLaunchPR.mspx

Microsoft Announces Commitment to Promote Sustained Social and Economic Opportunity for the Next 5 Billion People Company unveils affordable education suite for young people in developing nations and announces plans for 90 new Innovation Centers to promote local software ecosystems.

BEIJING — April 19, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled a new commitment to help close the digital divide by creating new products and programs that will help bring social and economic opportunity to the estimated 5 billion people who are not yet realizing the benefits of technology. Through the expansion of Microsoft® Unlimited Potential, the company is renewing and accelerating its long-term commitment to use technology, training and partnerships to transform education, foster local innovation, and enable jobs and opportunities to sustain a continuous cycle of social and economic growth for everyone.

“All human beings deserve a chance to achieve their full potential,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “Bringing the benefits of technology to the next 5 billion people will require new products that meet the needs of underserved communities; creative, new business approaches that make technology more relevant, accessible and affordable; and close collaboration between local governments, educational institutions and community organizations.”

[...]

“Computers and connectivity are still too expensive for private ownership by the poor, and applications as well as information resources that are appropriate to this group have been slow to emerge, in part because the poor themselves have not been involved in creating them,” said C.K. Prahalad, author and professor at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. “In order to help create the applications and start the business dynamo that unleashes their potential, the people at the bottom of the pyramid need to have reliable, affordable access to technology and to learn computing skills.”

Transforming Education

To help expand education opportunities worldwide, Microsoft is partnering with government, intergovernmental organizations, academic and industry leaders to facilitate access to high-quality education through dynamic, learner-focused technologies and resources.

[...]

Through the Partners in Learning program, Microsoft today announced the Microsoft Student Innovation Suite, an affordable and reliable software package for governments purchasing and giving Windows®-based PCs to primary and secondary students for their personal use at home and for schoolwork. The education suite includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live™ Mail desktop.

Microsoft will offer this suite in the second half of 2007 for $3 (U.S.) to qualifying governments that purchase and supply PCs directly to students. More information about the offer is available at http://www.microsoft.com/unlimitedpotential/MSIS.

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...from: http://www.laptop.org/ - the home of the One-Laptop-Per-Child program developed by by Nicholas Negroponte (http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Enicholas/) with a core of MIT Media Lab veterans.

mission Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade. The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation— just like their parents—never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. At the same time, their governments struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly urban underclass that cannot support itself, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so.

It is time to rethink this equation.

Given the resources that poor countries can reasonably allocate to education—sometimes less than $20 per year per pupil, compared to the approximately $7500 per pupil spent annually in the U.S.—even a doubled or redoubled national commitment to traditional education, augmented by external and private funding, would not get the job done. Moreover, experience strongly suggests that an incremental increase of “more of the same”—building schools, hiring teachers, buying books and equipment—is a laudable but insufficient response to the problem of bringing true learning possibilities to the vast numbers of children in the developing world

The first countries to sign up for buying the machine (officially dubbed XO") include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Rwanda, Nigeria and Libya.

...from their FAQ:

What is the $100 Laptop, really?

The XO is Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white, reflective, and sunlight-readable at three times the resolution. The laptop has a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it has three USB ports and an SD-card slot for expansion. The laptops have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops are designed to be extremely power efficient, enabling the use of innovative power systems (including wind-up).

Why not a desktop computer, or—even better—a recycled desktop machine?

Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to taking the computer home at night. Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware and innovative software. Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home.

Finally, regarding recycled machines: if we estimate 100 million available used desktops, and each one requires only one hour of human attention to refurbish, reload, and handle, that is tens of thousands of work years. Thus, while we definitely encourage the recycling of used computers, it is not the solution for One Laptop per Child.

...from: http://www.laptop.org/vision/progress/ 2007 April First school server deployed. March First mesh network deployed. February B2-Test (Beta 2)machines deployed to children in launch countries. January Rwanda starts out the New Year with a bang by announcing that it, too, will participate in OLPC. 2006 December Uruguay commits to OLPC. November 875 B1-Test (Beta 1)machines roll off the Quanta assembly-line in Shanghai. XO is for real. October Libya announces it has signed up for 1.2 million laptops, one for every school-age child in the nation.