Userful also benefited from the Brazilian government's strong support for open-source software, Rousseau said. Similar to Cuba, the government has developed and promotes the use of its own Linux distribution, Educational 2.0.

Rousseau also claimed . One is in the area of graphics performance, he said, due to the way Userful's software leverages the Linux X-Server GUI and a PC's plug-in video card.

Those video cards can be any low-end card, provided they have Linux drivers. According to Rousseau, $20 cards running the 7-year-old 7000 GPU are popular with its customers. That enables hiccup-free streaming video as well as good performance for Web games running .

Second, Userful supports USB devices and two-way audio, so students can use webcams and microphones to chat. Finally, it leverages Linux rather than Windows, which is more secure and requires less support, said Rousseau.

He acknowledged that potential customers worry about the lack of compatibility with Windows apps. But many are happy running free, open-source equivalents to popular Windows apps, such as , Firefox, GIMP for photo editing, and Thunderbird for e-mail -- or they can try running the WINE Windows emulator for Linux.