Classmate PC Hits India

Alongside so many computer systems aimed at students and built for education purposes, there are only two systems that jump ahead of the herd thanks to their innovative approach: the Classmate PC from Intel and the famous "$100 laptop" XO from OLPC. Even if now OLPC and Intel are working toward a common goal (Intel even accepted a place on the director board of OLPC), the processor producer has a similar, competing project running: the Classmate PC. Intel has decided to use three Indian vendors to assemble and sell the Classmate PC in India and HCL Infosystems, Wipro and Zenith Computers will start shipping the product to Indian schools next month.

The Classmate computer will be sold only to schools, McClure, Intel's director for marketing in South Asia said on Monday and was cited by the news site InfoWorld. "The Classmate PC has been specially designed to work in a networked classroom environment, and comes with software and features that give the teacher in the classroom control over the dissemination of content to students' PCs", he also said. Just like the XO laptop from OLPC, the Classmate brings a few innovations to make it more cost friendly for schools located in developing countries. For example it has no hard disk drive, but a single 2GB NAND flash memory, a low cost and low energy Intel Celeron processor running at 900MHz and WiFi and Ethernet connectivity.

A 7-inch LCD screen and 256 or 512MB of RAM memory complete the mini computer that weighs only 1.45 kg and comes with an energy pack that promises from three to four hours of use. "Intel plans to introduce new models of the Classmate PC by the end of this year or early next year, targeted at higher education and professional schools like nursing schools", McClure said. "These models may have some modifications in features, including large hard disk drives, to suit the usage models envisaged", he also mentioned.

"Intel is not targeting the Classmate PCs at government-run schools in India but only at particular schools, both because of their cost, and also because most of these schools are still behind in technology adoption. For these schools, Intel is donating about 10,000 PCs over the next three to five years, and is also training teachers on the use of computers. A number of Intel programs, including one called the Community PC, which offers a shared PC to local communities, aim to bridge the digital divide for this segment of the population", McClure said.