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Intel Unveils New Features For Its Low-Cost Laptops

Posted on: Thursday, 3 April 2008, 15:00 CDT

Intel Corp. announced the availability of bigger screens and more data storage capacity for its low-cost Classmate PCs Wednesday. The enhanced features will position the Classmate PCs to better compete with products from Cambridge, Mass.-based rival One Laptop per Child organization (OLPC).  The new PCs will begin selling this month for $300 to $500.   

The move is part of the company’s rising efforts to sell computers equipped with Intel chips to schools in developing countries, a market that holds great potential for technology companies due to the millions of people that are just coming online there. The target market also includes U.S. schoolchildren as potential users of the low-cost, stripped-down machines.

Classmate PCs are part of the chip maker’s initiative to generate interest in a new class of mobile devices called "netbooks," which have fewer features and are smaller than standard laptops, but are also easier to carry and require less power .

The company also announced other enhancements to the Classmate PC Wednesday during its developer forum in Shanghai, including a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive, an integrated Web camera, and the availability of both 7-inch and 9-inch screens. Five new “Atom” processors, chips designed for pocket-size Internet devices, were also announced at the forum by the company’s executives. The chips use less than 3 watts of power and come in speeds of up to 1.86 gigahertz, and will eventually be used in the Classmate PCs.

Classmates are based on Intel's design and use its processors, but are made by other manufacturers and marketed under other brand names. The first generation Classmate began selling in March 2007, and had 7-inch screens and fewer functions. Although the company declined to provide details, it said it has sold "tens of thousands" of the machines.

Intel and OLPC have feuded fiercely over their competing products. The nonprofit OLPC, a spinoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says it has sold hundreds of thousands of its $188 machines. OLPC’s low-cost XO laptop includes microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world’s second largest chip maker after Intel.

A short-lived truce between Intel and OLPC was halted earlier this year when Intel suddenly withdrew from OLPC's board of directors, claiming it could not continue cooperating with OLPC when founder Nicholas Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling Classmates overseas. Negroponte said the disagreement was a result of Intel’s sales representatives condemning OLPC’s machines while selling Intel's products.

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On the Net:

Intel Classmate PC

Atom processors

Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports

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