Slashdot Mirror
First Review of Intel's New Classmate PC
An anonymous reader writes "Intel gave the press a sneak preview of its 3rd generation Classmate PC at IDF. It looks like this guy managed to kidnap the only working sample for a while and write up a full report. It looks like a major departure from the original, with a rotating touch screen and Atom processor. There's no official word on pricing yet, but no doubt the OLPC guys will try to rain on Intel's parade."
Among other things, of course.
OLPC seems to be plugging away as hard as ever since all that angst over XP.
And some users are figuring out how to install regular linux desktops in an easier way. (Sugar's pretty hard for expert users to get used to.)
Obligatory on-topic snark: does ClassmatePC come with a virus checker?
OLPC started the whole sub-mini notebook craze. It was Wintel that did the raining*. It's bad enough the American monopolies had to get their greedy paws in the OLPC pie; let's at least keep the facts straight.
[*] - http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4472654.ece
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
From TFA: I can understand why a Windows environment would be considered desirable in an educational tool, since the children will be learning to use the OS and applications that theyâ(TM)ll be encountering in their adult life.
What a brillant insight!
See, a kid using Windows XP in high school will encounter Windows XP applications in ten or fifteen years. Why, he will work with only Windows XP his whole adult life. Otherwise, he'd have to be trained to be flexible and to learn by himself as soon as high school.
This brilliant insight also explains why Vista has failed on the marketplace. Why, when the average worker left high school school in the 80s, all the Apple IIs and C-64s in the school computer labs were running only Windows XP! No wonder he refuses Vista!
Thank God we have good, insightful journalists in this country. Otherwise, we might see all kind of crap printed on the web.
Note: yes, that was sarcasm. All of it. Thank you for noticing.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
There's no official word on pricing yet, but no doubt the OLPC guys will try to rain on Intel's parade.
Huh?
Let's do a quick review.
0) OLPC starts working on a laptop. It has a non-Intel chip and is designed for ultra power efficiency.
1) Intel starts working on their own laptop. Intel's of course has an Intel CPU; and it is designed to run Windows.
2) Official Intel sales people start trying to sell the Classmate to countries that are considering the OLPC laptop. In at least one case, an Intel sales person went to a country that had already agreed to buy OLPC laptops, and said in effect "That thing won't even run Windows... you sure you really want it?" At the time, Intel was officially a member of OLPC. (Rogue sales people? Evil corporate double-dealing? You decide.)
Now, what's up with "no doubt the OLPC guys will try to rain on Intel's parade"? The OLPC guys are the overbearing bullies and Intel is the underdog here?
I'm sure there are markets for something like the Classmate PC. I don't think it's the best choice for places with no electric infrastructure. And it has a cooling fan, so I don't think it's the best choice for places that are really hot, humid, and/or dusty. And I'm sure it costs about twice as much as the OLPC, so I don't think it's the best choice for the truly poor markets. And it almost certainly is much harder to repair than the OLPC design.[1] Hmmm. Am I raining on Intel's parade?
All that said, the world is a large place full of lots of kids. No way can OLPC crank out enough computers to help everyone. If Intel can sell their computer into the more affluent areas, they can make money. If their sales people can leave the OLPC markets alone, maybe Intel and OLPC can just get along.
P.S. I suspect that neither OLPC nor Intel will have the last word on educational computers for the masses. I'm starting to think that the best design would be a simple tablet that actually does cost $100 or less, and probably runs an ARM chip or something for crazy long battery life.
steveha
[1] From the photos, it's a pretty conventional clamshell, which means lots of connections running through the hinge so the motherboard can be in the base and the display in the lid; the OLPC design has motherboard and display in the lid, so that all that needs to run through the hinge is basically a USB cable. Teen-aged kids, armed with simple screwdrivers, can take apart two broken OLPC laptops, swap parts, and produce a working OLPC laptop. I really doubt this will be possible with the Classmate.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
From the article:
That's quite the prediction there, predicting what OS is going to be in predominant use when today's 7-year-olds enter the knowledge workforce in 15+ years. And even if the author turns out to be correct, and Windows is still in predominant use beyond 2020, it's highly doubtful that whatever version is in use then is going to come close to resembling Windows XP.
Really, at the age group these systems are targeted towards, the operating system shouldn't matter. The ideal of these systems isn't to teach operating system usage, but to use interactive applications for sharing information and teaching non-computer skills. You could do that with OS/2, and it's not going to impair anyone's ability to learn how to use an OS in the future. Heck, I started back at that age on a Commodore PET, and it certainly hasn't affected my ability to use a modern day OS.
Yaz.
On a high level, yes, but the stumbling block up to this point is that they cannot figure the hardware piece out to make it cheap but good. For $200, my XO is barely better than a USB stick, and less than 6 months later, my iPhone is 10 time the 'computer' the XO is, with just half the screen. Not taking Steve Jobs' offer for FREE OS X and then substituting with XP is IMO the single greatest disservice to the high tech education of the children around the world whom the OLPC claims to want to help.