Argentina government commits to buy MIT's $100 PCs

TECH LUMINARY and MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte continues winning allies in his quest to make the $100 Linux PC a reality in classrooms throughout the world, as part of the organization's OLPC (One Laptop per Child) programme.

Negroponte visited Argentina brifly, invited by Education Secretary Daniel Filmus, who used the opportunity to say "Argentina is committed to join the programme and advance in the manufacture of between 500.000 and one million of these laptops" and added that it will be the first spanish speaking country to build and distribute these systems to students. The idea, Filmus said is to "make one million computers available to 1M students in the poorest regions of Argentina". China and Brazil have already joined this programme, local media reports.

Finally, Negroponte added "we're discussing with Argentina's Education Ministry ways to me the initial price float between $115 and $100, and then start to go down to the $90-$80 range, when economies of scale allow more savings". These systems will feature a 500 mHz AMD cpu, a color display, flash memory instead of a hard drive and Wi-Fi connectivity. µ

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