LAS VEGAS—At CES 2009, Intel took the wraps off of its convertible Classmate PC, a tablet targeted at students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The original Classmate PC reference design was sold in bulk, primarily to international countries that were willing to deploy a thousand of these at a time. With this new version, Intel has partnered up with three OEMs in the United States: CTL, a Portland-based company, will brand it as 2GoPC, M&A will brand it as the Companion PC, and Equus Computer System will have a product as well. This new student tablet is available immediately online, with prices starting at $499. If you're not a student, this netbook is not for you.
Intel added a new swivel, resistive touch screen to the convertible platform, and updated the innards with the Atom platform. The keyboard is small, roughly an 84-percent one, and Intel admitted that it was designed with the slender fingers of a student in mind. Meanwhile, the MSI Wind and the HP Mini 1000 boast 92% keyboards.
Though the new Classmate PC is technically a netbook, it will not compete in that space.
For one thing, it's considerably more expensive than netbooks like the Wind, the Acer Aspire One, and the Lenovo Ideapad S10. CTL's 2GoPC sells for $549, which is a considerable premium to pay for a student netbook with tablet capabilities. The reference unit weighs 3.2 pounds with the 6-cell battery (up to 5 hours, claims CTL); a 4-cell option brings the weight to 2.9 pounds, although CTL is not planning to sell one.
A nifty handle is part of a sleeve that is securely attached to the unit, so students can easily pick it up and go. The 8.9-inch touchscreen is not digitized, but it does come with a stylus, which can be used, along with your fingers, to navigate the screen. The latter method works, although I had to press firmly with my fingertips and drag them. The stylus is comfortable enough so that a student can use it for the course of a day. The unit has a built-in accelerometer as well, so that rotating the unit itself will automatically adjust the orientation.
The new Classmate PC's features are like the original: modest, at best. The new model comes with two USB ports, VGA-Out, and an Ethernet port. The built-in Wi-Fi chip supports 802.11abg and 802.11n wireless. The Classmate's storage has improved since its predecessor, though it will still be offering 2-GB to 16-GB SSD drives, for price-sensitive markets, and rotating drive of between 40 GB and 120 GB, for optimal capacity.
The original Classmate PC used an Intel Celeron M processor; the new convertible tablet moves to the Intel Atom platform, specifically the 1.6-GHz N270 processor and GMA 950 graphics. The tablet will use the XP Home or Professional operating system, with memory configurations expandable to 1 GB. Intel does not plan to support Windows Vista at this point, which is arguably a better environment for tablet users.
As a single unit, the Intel Convertible Classmate PC is overpriced. But in bulk, prices can significantly drop. This is not something that's tailored to adults, as the keyboard is severely undersized and features are limited. (We'd suggest the eeePC T101H, an adult-friendly convertible.) For kids, however, Intel developed an entire ecosystem of collaboration software for them and their teachers. And because of that, there is a market for it.
source : www.pcmag.com
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