Portugal will take delivery of 500,000 low-cost Intel laptops, known as the Classmate PC, a move that boosts the effort's profile as an alternative to One Laptop Per Child's XO device.

The order is Intel's biggest to date for the Classmate PC, and instantly puts it at nearly the same level as competitor OLPC. That organization, founded by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, has only received orders for about 622,000 XO laptops.

Part of the problem was seen to be the OLPC's initial shunning of Windows and using Linux with a symbol-based interface. However, in May the group announced a partnership with Microsoft which will put Windows XP on the laptops. Windows versions will ship in the fall.

Intel has remained rather vague as to the number of Classmate PCs that have been shipped to its customers, only saying "hundreds of thousands" had already been produced.

The latest models now include bigger hard drives of up to 30GB in capacity and 512MB of memory. Screen size has also been increased from seven to nine inches in the newer models. While the device uses a Celeron chip currently, Intel plans to migrate to its Atom chips in future tweaks to the platform.

Portuguese parents will have a choice of operating system: either a specially designed version of Windows made for the Classmate PC, or an open-source version of Linux. The laptops will be distributed during the 2008-2009 school year.

While the Classmate PCs cost between $250 and $300 each, it is not known how much parents would need to pay for the laptop, if anything. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.