"Some say the Classmate PC is Intel's answer to (or competition with) the One Laptop per Child effort. Intel is hawking the lilliputian laptop in 'emerging markets' like Nigeria, India, and Mexico as a solution for worldwide education of primary and secondary students. It's to be officially released and shipped en masse to schools in Africa and South and Central America by the end of June. Recently my children and I borrowed a Classmate PC loaded with a custom version of Mandriva Linux. Most of us had fun."
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Member since:
2006-03-12
This is going to hurt Intel, who have been doing everything right. They are ahead of game on their CPU's. Their on-board graphics are being pulled out of the dark ages. Hell the support they have given Linux.
...and then they hurt a charity, I wish there was someone I can cheer for still.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2823501...
Edited 2007-05-25 18:32
Member since:2005-08-28
Well, it remains to be seen what's actually going to happen. I can still see a place for the Classmate PC and the XO to coexist.
The Classmate PC has a faster processor, more memory and a larger hard drive (and can run Windows) but it lacks the mesh, the display, the camera, the human-power generator, and is somewhat more expensive.
They could easily go to different places, with the XO serving more rural and/or poorer areas. (some; I have read the NYT article about computers in US schools).
Now, if Intel IS dumping and directly trying to get people to drop the XO in favor of its quickly-designed Classmate PC; that's bad. And it does seem awfully quickly designed given all the problems with wireless the article mentioned- hard locking whenever you try to connect to the internet? I can't imagine there are that many configurations of ClassmatePC that they would have simply missed that in testing, so they must have been very busy with other things.
I guess we can still cheer on... Trolltech?
Edited 2007-05-25 19:47
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-06-18
Member since:
2007-05-08
for an entry student machine imho. They are both full capable workstation after all. Few years ago we had been running desktops with such specs...
Do you remember things like Logo or build in Basic interpreters? Build in an editor, a calculator, a simple hardware to be able comprehended and programmed by a single individual at hardware level?
It's mistake to thing a someone starting with a computer needs even a wimpy 900MHz CPU and 256MB of ram. At those machines cost way too much to be affordable for really rural regions.