Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced that it has now begun fulfilling the Uttar Pradesh State Government contract for the distribution of laptops to students across various universities across the state. According to the contract details shared, 1.5 million notebooks will be distributed. The first 10,000 HP notebooks were handed out by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Shri Akhilesh Yadav, at a ceremony held at Colvin Taluqdars’ College in Lucknow on Monday. On January 28, the UP state government awarded the Rs. 2,800 crore (USD 515 mn approx) contract to HP to supply 1.5 million notebooks over a seven month period.

As part of the project, HP notebooks are being provided by the UP state government to all students passing Class 12 or equivalent examinations in 2012, and enrolling for higher education, across 313 tehsils in the Uttar Pradesh region. The institutions whose students are eligible to receive the laptops include Aeronautical Training Institute, Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Faculty of Architecture GBTU Lucknow, Institute of Engineering and Technology, Karamat Husain Muslim Girls PG College, King George Medical University UP LKO, M.B.P. Govt PG College LKO, Mahamaya Government Degree College BKT LKO, National PG College LKO, Navyug Kanya PG College Rajender Nagar, Netaji Subhas Govt Girls PG College Aliganj, PT Deen Dayal Upadhyay Govt Girls PG College Rajajipuram LKO, Shia P.G. College and UP Viklang Uddhar Dr. Shakuntala Misra University. HP will also be setting up a call center in the city of Lucknow, along with service centers at all the 313 tehsils based on the distribution schedule.

As part of the contract, HP has said they will be shipping the Pavilion G4 notebooks. These laptops 

have a 14 inch display, with a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. There will be 2 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard disk capacity. The other features include a webcam, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. The Pavilion G4 has three USB ports, HDMI, Media card reader, a port for the microphone jack, a VGA, one headphone or speaker out port apart from the AC power slot, a DVD Read and Write optical drive and support typing in three languages - Hindi, English and Urdu. The laptops will come preloaded with Windows 7 operating system, and the Microsoft Office Pro Academic Version 2010, with the additional option to run the Ubuntu operating system in dual boot mode.