Microsoft, AMD Partner on PC for School Kids
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PC Magazine - The IQ PC will include a selection of software from Microsoft and its partners that includes Windows.
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InfoWorld - In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel rival&#160;AMD.
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Blog: The textbook publisher says it signed a pact with Microsoft to develop a new digital education system for school districts.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates outlined on Wednesday a vision of education in which students worldwide use high-speed Internet connections and curriculums that draw on online resources such as Wikipedia to become more globally competitive. "We are now on the verge of something where technology will make a difference," Gates said in an address before the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland. Advances in hardware, software, and connectivity and are enabling a "user-centric" focus for technology, letting people access information over vast distances inexpensively, Gates said. The address by Gates concluded the two-day Government Leaders Forum, an annual Microsoft-sponsored conference attended by government leaders throughout Europe. The delegates addressed education issues and how Europe can become more competitive through the use of IT. Gordon Brown, the U.K.'s chancellor of the exchequer who oversees financial matters, warned in a speech before Gates' address that the number of jobs that require no skills in the country will drop from 3.4 million today to only 600,000 by 2020. Those who donât have access to education programs and acquire IT skills are "at risk of being unemployed over the next decade." "We cannot afford to ignore the potential of any child," Brown said. Microsoft is backing several educational programs aimed at integrating technologies into classrooms that some young people may already be encountering outside of school. Teachers may have trouble keeping up with students who are already using devices such as the Xbox Live gaming system at their homes, Gates said. "When they [students] come back into the classroom and there's a chalkboard there, that teacher has a hard time living up to the level of drama and richness," he said. Gates announced that Microsoft will expand the company's Innovative Schools initiative, which looks at ways to better integrate technology and learning, to an additional 12 countries: Ireland, the U.K., France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Qatar, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Hong Kong. Microsoft has undertaken a variety of projects as part of the program. In Philadelphia, the company joined the city's school district and built a 750-student high school -- called a School of the Future -- that focuses on how technology can improve student performance. It opened in September 2006. The company provided technical guidance, which included the building of a secure Web portal for parents and students for access to assignments, class schedules and grades. In the U.K., Microsoft backs the Building Schools for the Future program, a Â£40 billion ($78 billion) government program to revamp secondary education. The company assists local authorities on ways to integrate technology into education. In Taipei, students at Zhong Lun High School have improved their acceptance rate from 36 percent to 50 percent since it became a School of the Future two years ago, Microsoft said. The company also helped with a distance education facility for teachers, where they can design and publish e-learning material. At the start of his address, Gates spoke of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel magnate who later used his wealth to fund libraries and educational institutions. Next year, Gates will step down as Microsoft's chairman to focus on the philanthropy through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on global health and development issues. Gates recalled one of Carnegie's statements: "He who dies rich, dies disgraced." "Iâm working on avoiding that, but it's a high responsibility," Gates said to laughs.
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Microsoft will give free access to some of its development, design and gaming software to students worldwide to help spark their creativity and prepare for high-tech careers -- and, perhaps, to improve the company's reputation with young people.
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Customers that use the dual-core processors that Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) are expected to begin shipping next year will not need to buy extra licenses for Microsoft Corp.
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Will it sell? That's the 40,875,000 rupee question Microsoft plans to sell a PC for kids and launch an educational channel on its MSN portal in India as the next step in a worldwide "Unlimited Potential" program.â¦
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Microsoft Corp., world&#39;s largest software maker, announced a new licensing policy for dual-core microprocessors from Intel and AMD.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. wants to see its low-cost Classmate PC help transform they way students in developing countries are educated. And the company is not alone. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project also hopes its low-cost XO laptop can close the "digital divide" that exists between the developed world and emerging markets. Much has been made of these two efforts, which are often painted as rivals by the media and observers. Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel's sales and marketing group, recently spoke with IDG News Service about the Classmate PC and the challenges Intel hopes to address with the device. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview. IDG News Service: Is there room for both the Classmate PC and OLPC as efforts to close the digital divide in emerging markets? Sean Maloney: I've spent a good deal of my life traveling around emerging markets and the first thing I want to say is that it's a truly humongous problem. It's an enormous, enormous problem you're talking about. No one company is going to solve this, whether it's us or the OLPC guys, or Asustek, or HP. And no one single approach is going to tackle the issue either. It's very diverse what people want. Even if you pick one country, say India, you're not going to get the state governments having the same opinions on how this should be handled. It's a perfect problem that a Taiwanese economy of scale could tackle. What Taiwan has always done in the past -- with stunning success -- is drive down costs for standardization and mass manufacturing. IDGNS: And standardization helps keep costs low... Maloney: Yeah, if they're standardized it makes field repair easier and logistics easier and distribution chains easier and all that stuff. It's not just about the device. It's also about the education software that goes on it, the role of the teacher in the class, and then someone has to maintain the thing locally. Many of these countries actually want to assemble it and someone has to do the integration, and all of that. It's a broader issue than just the device, regardless of whether it's an Asustek device, or a Classmate PC, or an OLPC. IDGNS: Apart from education, will these low-cost computers help to increase PC penetration in developing countries? Maloney: To be determined. I've spent a lot of time in the last year in emerging markets and the striking thing is how many mid-range and high-end notebooks are being sold. If you go to Egypt or Turkey or Ukraine or Poland or Czech Republic or Brazil or Argentina, you're seeing shopping malls everywhere converting over to selling notebooks. You could see it in China a year ago, where you go into shopping malls that used to sell desktops and now they're full of notebooks. You see the same thing all across India. It is amazing how many mainstream, made in Taiwan or made in China, notebooks are sold in emerging markets. People have the same aspirations and brand aspirations. You can't patronize people and say we get the big one with the 14-inch color screen and you get the little one, that's not going to work. My view is that these things, like Classmate PC, are much better targeted at kids, with a much smaller screen, smaller keyboard. IDGNS: Is the aim to give the students in developing countries basic PC skills, or is computer access the key to something larger? Maloney: It's about the Web more than anything. I have young kids and it's almost obscene: my kids have access to it and there are 2 billion kids that don't. The disadvantage for someone who doesn't have access to the Web is overwhelming. Â
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Despite previous bad blood between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child program, which opted to include AMD processors in the low-cost computer for developing nations, the leading chip manufacturer will join the non-profit's board of directors and help fund the initiative.
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Microsoft next month will make available Student 2008, it's suite of utilities designed for education. The package includes the company's Encarta Premium 2008 encyclopedia, as well as Learning Essentials 2.0 and foreign language help.
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Intel is working on an updated version of its&#160;Classmate PC&#160;designed for schoolchildren in developing countries, part of a wider effort to spur demand for low-cost laptops.Based on the company&#39;s&#160;upcoming Silverthorne processor, the new Classmate PC will likely be sleeker and have longer battery life than the current version, according to Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel&#39;s Asia-Pacific operations.&quot;It&#39;s fair to say that there is a Silverthorne-based Classmate design in the works that would likely come out coincidentally with the microprocessor,&quot; Shenoy said, adding that Intel has not determined pricing for the new laptop design.Silverthorne, which is billed as being easy on both power and the pocketbook, is part of Intel&#39;s Menlow platform that also includes the upcoming Poulsbo chip set. The dual-core chip is scheduled for release during the middle of this year and is central to Intel&#39;s plans for small, handheld computers that Intel calls MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices, and low-cost laptops, like the Classmate and Asustek&#39;s Eee PC.The current Classmate PC is a big-boned, 1.4 kilogram machine with a 900MHz Celeron M processor and a 7-inch screen. The laptop runs Windows XP and comes with Wi-Fi, 256MB of RAM and 2GB of flash memory in lieu of a hard disk. These specifications won&#39;t send a gamer&#39;s heart racing, but they are enough to get the intended job done.Priced at around $285, the Classmate PC is roughly $100 more expensive than the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s XO laptop, the Classmate&#39;s main competitor. Intel has said volume production would bring down the Classmate&#39;s cost to about $200, but the low-cost laptops have so far grabbed more headlines than sales.Even so, Intel&#39;s Classmate PC development efforts have had a wide impact, largely thanks to the Eee PC, which uses many of the same components but has a thinner, more stylish design.Consumer enthusiasm for the Eee PC largely caught Intel off guard. When the low-cost laptop, which also uses a 900MHz Celeron M processor, was announced at the Computex trade show last year, Intel expected Asustek to announce a $199 laptop for education customers. But the Taiwanese computer maker had other ideas and declared -- to the surprise of Intel executives -- that the Eee PC would instead be marketed to consumers in markets around the world.While the Eee PC&#39;s price tag climbed substantially from the original announced price, at $400 or so the small laptops remain a relative bargain and users have been snapping them up as fast as Asustek can make them.As other computer makers show interest in following Asustek&#39;s lead, Intel has embraced the low-cost laptop as an important product segment for the consumer market, as well as the education market.&quot;We think that there&#39;s going to be a wide variety of multinationals and local OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] who decide to go after this segment,&quot; Shenoy said.
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By Brian Krebs, Special To The Washington Post | August 30, 2004. Microsoft Corp.&#39;s decision to release a major upgrade for its flagship operating system in the same month that hundreds of thousands of students
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The One Laptop Per Child Project says it is working with Microsoft to develop an XO laptop for children in developing nations that boots both Linux and Windows XP.
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Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, has told news media that OLPC and Microsoft are working on a dual-boot XO laptop, able to run either Linux or Windows.
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Aim is to give students easy access to "portable office" software suite designed to operate in Windows environment.
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High school students likely to get Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player and software for instant messaging.