Press: "Offers of U$S 205 and U$S 270 for laptops for Plan Ceibal"

(Translated from
Prensa: "Ofertas de U$S 205 y U$S 270 por laptops del Plan Ceibal", published by Enrique Placé on Sept. 14th, 2007.)

"LATU opened yesterday (Sept. 13th, 2007) the bidding offers for Plan Ceibal's computers. Brighstar offered laptops for U$S 205 and Grupo Positivo from Brazil offered laptops between US$ 270 and U$S 300 depending on the type of machine.

The special technical committee of Uruguay's Technological Laboratory (LATU) and the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) finished the studies of the technical offers from both companies and yesterday noon opened the economic offers. The person in charge of the bidding, former national director of industry, Miguel Mariatti, said to El País that the information about the offers will be made public after being evaluated at the LATU's board, so he declined to give details at this time.

However, from sources related to this bidding El País learned that Brighstar Uruguay SA concentrated its proposal on terminals XO for kids, with 256Mb of memory, running open software (Linux), while Positivo offered computers with 256 Mb of memory also with Linux, and 512 Mb of memory with Windows platform from Microsoft. This company made a much broader proposal that included servers, connectivity, contents, network support, training for teachers and students, and availability of educational portals.".

Complete article at: Diaro El País (in Spanish).