April 5th, 2008Intel reveals New Classmate PCs
 
Intel Corp. reveal new features for its line of low-cost laptops for schools , adding bigger screens and more data storage ability as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with the One Laptop per Child organization, which sells a rival machine.
Intel’s new Classmate PCs – slated to go on sale in April for between $300 and $500 – mirror the company’s growing efforts to sell computers ready 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 U.S. 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 plans the corporation is calling “netbooks,” which are smaller and have fewer functions than standard laptops other than also use distant less power plus are easier to carry around. Other tweaks to the Classmate that Intel announced Wednesday from its developer forum within Shanghai include the availability of 7-inch and 9-inch screens, a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive and an integrated Web camera.
At the developer forum, Intel managerial 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 by means of the 7-inch screen and fewer functions. Intel said it has sold “tens of thousands” of the machines but refuse to provide more specific data. Intel and OLPC have feuded furiously over their competing foodstuffs. The Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit OLPC says it has sold hundreds of thousands of its $188 machines.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff’s low-cost XO laptop includes a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world’s No. 2 microchip creator behind Intel. A short-lived truce between Intel and OLPC ended earlier this year when Intel abruptly pulled out from OLPC’s board of directors. Intel claimed it couldn’t continue cooperating with OLPC when founder Nicholas Negroponte insist Intel stop selling Classmates overseas. Negroponte said the dispute stalk from Intel sales reps disparaging OLPC products while approaching Intel’s own machines.
