In Peru, a Pint-Size Ticket to Learning

One Laptop is bidding on a contract with Brazil's government that Negroponte says demanded unrealistically onerous support requirements.

The XO machines are water-resistant, rugged and designed to last five years. They have no fan, so they won't suck up dust; are built to withstand drops from five feet; and can absorb power spikes typical of places with irregular electricity.

Mendoza, the psychologist, is overjoyed that the program stipulates that youngsters get ownership of the laptops.

Take Kevin, the aspiring trumpet player.

Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother cooks lunch, he draws a soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin plays a song by Caliente, his favorite band, that he recorded off Arahuay's single television channel. He shows off photos he took of himself with his 3-year-old brother.

A bare light bulb hangs by a wire from the ceiling. A hen bobs around the floor. There are no books in this two-room house. Kevin's parents didn't get past sixth grade.

Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights.

Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what the Internet can do for them.

Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska -- the youngest of her six children -- has meant to her. Miluska's father, it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.

"We never imagined having a computer," said Arrendondo, a cook.

Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents, about half of whom are illiterate?

"No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around, I turn it on and poke around."

Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop.

"It's also got chess, which I sort of know," she said, pausing briefly.

"I'm going to learn."