“Intel offered a sneak peek of the next-generation of its Classmate PC design at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. The new design features a tablet, touchscreen, and motion-sensing user interface, and is powered by – you guessed it – an Atom processor.”
New Features:
- Touchscreen ^aEUR” pen and on-screen soft keyboard
- Tablet mode ^aEUR” simple user-interface shell; quick launcher for tablet mode
- Enhanced software ^aEUR” easier network connection and collaboration simple computer management, and localized, education-friendly content
There is a side-by-side comparison chart in the ClassmatePC’s website.
Quick Highlights:
- A beefier processor (1.6 GHz Intel Atom)
- Bigger hard-disk (Up to 8 GB flash HDD)
- Increased battery life (Up to 6.5 hours)
- An optional built-in camera
The ClassmatePC offers either Windows XP or Linux as operating system. There is no specific information about which distribution of Linux is used for the ClassmatePC. Mandriva Linux was used in the first generation ClassmatePC.
Looks like OLPC’s competition is getting tougher.
the 945? really? that chipset takes 5 times more power to use than the proccessor itself. (atom->4watts, 945->22watts) the 3 or 4 series chipsets would have made more sense from a power consumption prospective.
Considering the earlier incarnation of this machine was part of Intel’s quite deliberate attempt to destroy the OLPC project, my own feeling is that the Classmate should by boycotted. If I needed a machine like this, I’d wait for one from someone else. The article, with the pics of schoolchildren from around the world, would like us to think that Intel cares. Intel doesn’t.
Edited 2008-08-21 18:58 UTC
intel is first and foremost a business, and business’s stay alive by making money. you can hardly hold it against intel for seeing an emerging market and wanting a piece of it. Intel is not just some evil souless corporation, they do a lot of good for compunities, open source, the environment, and so on.
to hate them just because you need someone to hate is fine, but don’t put them down without knowing the facts first.
http://www.intel.com/intel/corpresponsibility/index.htm?iid=siteind…
http://www.intel.com/intel/environment/index.htm?iid=siteindex+corp…
http://www.intel.com/community/index.htm?iid=siteindex+corp_communi…
…the list goes on and on
Edited 2008-08-21 19:51 UTC
not only that but they are proud of their tech, their engineers and they feel they have something to offer to the rest of the world.
Don’t be a drama queen. This is about technology, not about good vs evil.
ok I’ll tell Libya and Burma to boycott the classmate. In the name of freedom.
Oh, I dunno, the OLPC Project did a mighty fine job of destroying itself.
For accuracy’s sake – Mandriva was one of the OSes certified for the original ClassmatePC, but not the only one. Windows XP was also certified. Both have been used in production installations of ClassmatePCs. I don’t think there were any other certified OSes, but IMBW on that one.
Adam, the ClassmatePC website says that Mesh Network is available for Linux only. Do you know if this is the same as the Mesh network in OLPC? Is it a ClassmatePC exclusive feature or can we see it on the next Mandriva PowerPack edition?
If that’s talking about the new Classmate, I don’t know if that actually has anything to do with MDV at all, I’m not sure what the status with the new Classmate is.
AFAIK the original Mandriva-on-Classmate didn’t have any custom mesh networking stuff. At least, it didn’t when I saw it. I may be entirely clueless on this, it’s not a project I was heavily involved in
i want one of those for my own use!