Intel's Classmate PC to go head to head with OLPC in Brazil
Given the quite disparate price points -- around $400 for Intel's fledgling Classmate PC, $140 for the cute little OLPC -- we would think the two different machines wouldn't be treading on each other's toes too terribly much at this time, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Brazil. Intel just committed to donating 700-800 of the Classmate PCs for a large in-school evaluation. Brazil will be pitting the laptop up against an OLPC prototype they just got in the mail, along with another similarly education-bent laptop from an Indian company. "We're going to put it in the classroom and see how it does," says Jose Aquinto. Walter Bender of the OLPC camp welcomes the competition: "The only way the price is going to continue to go down is competition in the marketplace." Sure sounds like they're getting it.
