With Userful and NVIDIA, students in South Africa now experience richer technology in the classroom.

Providing computers and Internet access to South Africa's 28,000 schools and over 12 million students is a challenge. In addition to the familiar issue of acquiring computers with limited educational budgets, schools in South Africa have additional infrastructure challenges, including a lack of skilled technical personnel, the need for increased protection from theft, and classroom electrical upgrades to support networks of computers.

With hardware from NVIDIA and Desktop Multiplier® software from Userful, Omni Technology Solutions, and Novell South Africa, the government of South Africa has found a viable classroom computing solution. As a result, schools in South Africa are providing up to seven students with a full desktop experience (monitor, mouse, and keyboard) for each computer. Each computer includes four NVIDIA graphics cards which, along with Userful's Desktop Multiplier software, allows multiple students to simultaneously use the same computer. The schools have fewer systems to buy and maintain, reduced power requirements, and the systems can be securely stored in a server room.

South Africa has over 12 million students and 28,000 schools.

So far the Userful platform has been deployed to 105 schools in South Africa's North West Province, allowing up to 2,205 students to have computers and Internet access using only 315 systems. With this new access to technology, students will learn more and expand their technical skills, narrowing the "digital divide," and helping diversify the economy of South Africa.

With NVIDIA GPUs, Userful is able to provide high-powered, high-performance, high-speed computing and Internet connectivity—all the functionality of a high-performance computer—at an affordable price.

"NVIDIA's leadership in price, performance, and worldwide availability has made them an ideal hardware platform for our software," says Timothy Griffin, president of Userful. "NVIDIA technology allows Userful to offer our high-performance approach to affordable desktops to system builders on a global basis. Educators worldwide are looking for a cost-effective and sustainable way to bring computers into the classroom; Userful and NVIDIA make this a reality."

For more information on Userful and Desktop Multiplier, please visit: http://userful.com

For more information on Omni Technology Solutions and deploying Desktop Multiplier on Novell, please visit: http://www.omni-ts.com/linux-desktop