Intel shows off new classmate PCs
Intel unveiled new features for its line of low-cost laptops for
schools on Wednesday, adding bigger screens and more data storage
capacity as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with the One
Laptop per Child organisation, which sells a competing machine.
Intel’s new Classmate PCs - slated to go on sale in April for
between $US300 and $US500 - reflect the company’s growing efforts
to sell computers equipped with its own chips to schools in
developing countries, a battleground for technology companies
because of the millions of people there just coming online.
But the target market has expanded to include kids in the
developed world as potential users of cheaper, stripped-down
machines.
Classmate PCs also are part of Intel’s push to generate interest
in a new class of mobile devices the company is calling “netbooks,”
which are smaller and have fewer functions than standard laptops
but also use far less power and are easier to carry around.
Other tweaks to the Classmate that Intel announced on Wednesday
from its developer forum in Shanghai include the availability of
both 7-inch (18cm) and 9-inch (23cm) screens, a 30 gigabyte hard
disk drive and an integrated web camera.
At the developer forum, Intel executives also rolled out five
new processors under the “Atom” brand name. The chips are designed
for pocket-size internet devices. The chips come in speeds up to
1.86 gigahertz while using less than 3 watts of power.
Intel said its Classmate PCs will eventually use Atom
processors.
Classmates are based on Intel’s design and include its
processors, but they are built by other manufacturers and sold
under a variety of brand names.
The first generation went on sale in March 2007 with the 7-inch
screen and fewer functions. Intel said it has sold “tens of
thousands” of the machines but declined to provide more specific
data.
Intel and OLPC have feuded furiously over their competing
products.
The nonprofit OLPC says it has sold hundreds of thousands of its
$US188 machines.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff’s low-cost XO
laptop includes a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices, the
world’s No. 2 microprocessor maker behind Intel.
A short-lived truce between Intel and OLPC ended earlier this
year when Intel suddenly pulled out from OLPC’s board of
directors.
Intel claimed it couldn’t continue cooperating with OLPC when
founder Nicholas Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling Classmates
overseas. Negroponte said the dispute stemmed from Intel sales reps
disparaging OLPC products while pushing Intel’s own machines.
AP
