Anyone want a ‘Classmate’?

By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

INTEL is donating specially designed “Classmate PCs” to at least 15 public schools in the Philippines. The Classmate PC, Intel said, is meant for use by Kindergarten to Grade 12 students.

A Classmate PC shown to journalists was equipped with an Intel Celeron processor with 1GB of flash memory instead of a hard drive. It comes with a blue leather-like casing that resembles an ordinary lunch box. It runs Windows XP (with basic Microsoft Office applications like Word) and carries specially designed e-learning software.

Intel gave away 50 Classmate PCs to an elementary school in Muntinlupa City during a visit Wednesday by Intel executives Sean Maloney and John Antone.

The company is working with the local Department of Education in promoting its “1:1 e-Learning” initiative, which basically espouses one PC for every teacher and student.

The Classmate PC is an original Intel design and made by an OEM partner, which Antone declined to reveal during a briefing.

Here’s a photo I took of the Classmate PC. The cool dude testing it is Jing Garcia, the Tech Times editor of Manila Times.

Intel is not making the Classmate PC available for retail although it reportedly costs less than $400.

The company is expected to announce at the Computex trade show in Taiwan a low-cost laptop jointly designed with Taiwanese maker Asustek that costs below $200.

Antone said this laptop design also targets the same user base as that addressed by the Classmate PC. He expects similar low-cost notebook designs to join this category.

“Lack of (broadband) access, however, is still a limiting factor,” he said.

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