14 DAY TRIAL // Intel announced the Classmate PC in a live demo at EXPOCOMM 2006 in Argentina. On the scene were Esteban Galuzzi, Intel's general manager for the "Southern Cone" region, Gustavo Sorgente, GM at Sun Microsystems for the "Latin America South" region, and Diego Majdalani, GM at Dell Computers Argentina. Each of the execs took turns to voice their own personal monologue on the direction of the IT and telecommunications industries. Questions were only allowed at the end, and not by using a microphone but using little paper notes that were then transmitted to the moderator who read them aloud for the relevant exec to answer it, reports The Inquirer.
Galuzzi presented slides showing the "Affordable PC", a black closed box that cannot be opened or user upgraded, and the "Classmate PC", Intel's answer to MIT's $100 PC (One Laptop Per Child project). MIT's machine will run on AMD processors and Linux, while Intel's offer will run Windows and according to Galuzzi, will cost around $300.
A live working "engineering sample" of the Classmate PC was then unveiled. The reporter from The Inquirer asked: "can one run Linux on a Classmate PC?", and the answer was: "well, it's a PC, so you can run any PC operating system you want on it". So, it seems the hardware won't be locked.
The Classmate PC is "a budget computer for emerging markets", which really means a PC for those countries that prefer to pay 3 times the money (compared to the MIT model, the Children's Machine 1 - CM1) for a product that runs Windows instead of Linux.
Here are the specs of a CM1 unit.
And here are some specs for the Classmate PC: Fitted with a Celeron processor with 915GMS chipset, 7 inch WVXGA (800x600) screen, 256 MB DDR2 SO-DIMM memory and 1 GB flash memory. It will have a standard Lithium-Ion battery.
Hardly a battle, as the CM1 will wipe the floor with the CPC.