Submitted by Intel said Tuesday its diminutive low-cost laptop will be evaluated in Brazil next year alongside a cheaper alternative from a nonprofit group seeking to bring computers to poor children worldwide. The company said it would donate 700 to 800 of the USD 400 (EUR 300) ‘Classmate PC’, to the government for a large-scale evaluation in schools. Intel has already tested the computers on a smaller scale with students and teachers in a poor neighbourhood of Campinas, near Sao Paulo.
Surely it will come with Windows CE
Intel lost out to AMD when they were bidding for CPUs. Now, they’ve come up with their own version. Intel certainly has the resources and knowledge base to do it. The difference I see is that Intel might be motivated to sell this type of device to anyone rather than just providing it for children in classrooms. I think it would be great. Ultra-portable computers have always had a pretty steep price difference just for their size. Imagine what will happen as volumes increase through these types of programs.
What kills me is that they are implying a $250 price difference was created almost entirely through shipping costs. How would they propose to ship their machines?
As title said. I have to be critical about this, we have see where it leads. My guess is nowhere. hehe
whats the point of this $400 non-standart device when new VIA C7 laptop costs $500 in retail?
Microsoft…and now Intel. For a project that is meant to *benefit* children. Its gone from being publicly ridiculed to a something to compete with.
If there is a sign that OLPC is already a success. I think its happened.
I suspect very strongly that support this late is not driven by the ideal of making it successful, but “muddy the waters” late in the day. Rather than provide a real viable alternative. That will actually benefit the children.
How is that “low-price”? I can go out and buy a brand new “real” laptop (example: http://www.pcx.com.ph/showcase/profile.asp?id=1204) for a little more than $500. Sure, it wont have 1Gb of CF but why would you want that? I mean, how much roughness is a laptop designed for *classrooms* going to see?
Also, $400 is an absolute sh1tload of money when you’re poor, it’s a good chunk of your *yearly* salary. Sure, they’ll offer you a loan but is being in debt really what you need when you’re already poor?
Edited 2006-12-07 05:19
If it doesn’t use a hard drive it will be more rugged than a laptop that crashes its hard drive if it’s ever dropped. That was one of the design complexities of the OLPC project and why they used Flash memory instead.