Asustek, Intel at work on $199 laptop
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Intel and Asustek are working on a $199 laptop designed for emerging markets and for use in education.
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(InfoWorld) - In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel rivalÂ AMD. Previously, Intel's efforts in the education market appeared at odds with those of OLPC. While OLPC expects toÂ finally begin delayed volume shipments of its XO laptopÂ in September,Â priced at $175, Intel has been selling itsÂ Classmate PC laptopÂ in bulk since March. Classmate currently costs around $225, but Intel hopes to lower that price to $200 by year-end. Intel has been selling Classmate primarily in Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan, while OLPC has beta copies of its laptops in use by schoolchildren in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uruguay. The governments of those seven nations have pledged to purchase the XO laptops in bulk when volume shipments begin. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, has previously said publicly that Intel's Classmate efforts have been adversely affecting his project, given the well-funded nature of the chip maker's initiative. Intel and OLPC had engaged in conversations on and off for a while but nailed down an agreement to work together in the last month, according to Will Swope, vice president and director of corporate affairs at Intel. "Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?" he said. The chip maker has spent more than $1 billion in education initiatives since its founding and over the last five to six years has been investing annually around $100 million on such projects. "How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?" Swope asked. The answer, he said, was to join OLPC. "Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children,â Negroponte agreed in a statement. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will look into collaborating on both the technology and educational fronts. Intel will also join the OLPC board. In the short term, Intel will effectively be supporting two different laptop programs -- OLPC and Classmate -- which will sometimes overlap, while retaining some unique capabilities, according to Swope. It will be up to governments to decide which machine they want to buy for their schools. Over time, the two lines will become "more complementary" and Intel and OLPC will partner a lot more, he said. As yet, it's too early for Intel to provide specifics on that area of the relationship between the two organizations and product lines, Swope added. The agreement doesn't have anything to do with Intel making chips for the XO laptop, although should the contract to provide silicon for the device be up for grabs, Intel would naturally be interested, Swope said. AMD, an OLPC board member, is supplying its Geode processors for the machine. "We're definitely excited by this change of heart [by Intel] and welcome their contributions," said Rebecca Gonzales, director of marketing communications at AMD. "We're happy to have them as part of the group." AMD has long said that the technology divide that OLPC is trying to bridge with its XO laptop can't be achieved by a single entity, Gonzales added. AMD has worked closely with the other corporate members of OLPC, which include Brightstar, eBay, Google, News, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, and Red Hat. The vendor is looking forward to Intel joining the board and providing a fresh take on the project, Gonzales said. Intel isn't disclosing all the conditions of its membership in OLPC. Swope noted that a number of other IT vendors are lining up to join the project under the same terms as Intel, and OLPC doesn't want to disclose those specifics until those other companies have also become members. Intel also isn't revealing how much it's investing in OLPC and that figure may remain undisclosed, Swope said. OLPC has struggled to bring its ambitious project to fruition. Initially, the organization had hoped to begin selling its laptop at $100, but that's proved impossible given spiraling production costs. The laptop is being manufactured by Quanta with the Taiwanese vendor hoping to produce 1 million computers by year-end. Negroponte continues to vacillate on whether OLPC will also make the notebooks available outside of the developing world, for instance, to U.S. states.
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Intel's rugged, low-cost laptop is now available to to consumers and businesses in India.
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U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices  has unveiled a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
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IBM is now selling its first computer based on the multicore Cell processor, a blade server called the BladeCenter QS20 that starts at $18,995.
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Taiwanese laptop computer maker Micro-Star International (MSI) is already hard at work on an ultra-low cost notebook PC based on&#160;Intel&#39;s Diamondville microprocessor&#160;to compete against rival&#160;Asustek Computer&#39;s Eee PC.Asustek created the Eee PC laptop to sell in emerging markets such as India. It carries an Intel Celeron processor, weighs less than a kilogram, has a 7-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) and can connect to the Internet wirelessly. The lowest-priced version costs NT$7,999 (US$248).MSI is working on a similar device for the ultra-low cost notebook market, using an extremely low voltage, low cost microprocessor from Intel called Diamondville. Intel has said it will formally unveil the chip at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai this April.&quot;When Diamondville is ready, our project will be ready,&quot; said an MSI executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. He indicated that MSI plans to launch its ultra-low cost notebook in July or August, but declined to offer further details.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - After a break of several years, Toshiba is about to introduce a laptop computer powered by an AMD processor. The world's number-four laptop PC maker said the new machine will be available soon in the U.S. and Europe. It will be aimed at the entry-level sector of the market, said Junko Furuta, a spokeswoman for Toshiba in Tokyo. No other details about the laptop were immediately available, although Toshiba suggested its U.S. and European divisions could be making an announcement soon. The design win for AMD comes as it is stepping up the pressure against rival Intel in the expanding laptop sector. Intel has just launched its new Santa Rosa laptop platform, and in response, AMD is readying its own platform called Puma, however that isn't likely to launch until mid-2008. The two companies are locked in competition at the bottom-end of the market too. AMD scored the contract to supply chips for One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop," after which Intel introduced its own machine for emerging markets, the Classmate PC. Toshiba stopped using AMD chips in laptops around 2001 -- something that was highlighted in court documents when AMD launched an antitrust suit against Intel almost two years ago. AMD alleged that Toshiba dropped the use of its chips after receiving a "very substantial" payment from Intel. Toshiba was receiving "market development funds" from Intel worth about $25 million to $30 million per quarter, and those would be jeopardized if it used AMD chips, the lawsuit alleged.
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Company announces details for its computer-in-a-digital-pen. High-end version will have 2GB of memory and cost $199; a 1GB version will sell for $149.
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Asustek Computer, a leading Taiwanese computer maker, will launch its much awaited low-price computer next month, becoming one of the first companies marketing an ultra-mobile laptop for the developing world.
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The One Laptop Per Child Foundation indicated Monday that it might begin selling a version of the "$100 laptop" it is now producing for educational use. The system would become available by the holiday season for a price of about $350 USD.
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US chip maker Advanced Micro Devices has unveiled a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
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A computer developed for poor children around the world, dubbed 'the $100 laptop,' has reached a milestone: Its price tag is now $200.
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Attention, notebook shoppers: Intel drops the cost of Pentium Ms and Centrino--a sign that cheaper laptops are on the way.
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(InfoWorld) - Discussions are under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside a version of theÂ One Laptop Per ChildÂ (OLPC) project's "$100 laptop" for children in developing countries, according to representatives from both parties. "Intel, like a lot of other people, is more than welcome to try to design great silicon for this project and this mission, and we've been working with them to help them do exactly that," said Walter Bender, OLPC's president, in a telephone interview. Despite its nickname, the OLPC's lime-green XO laptop actually costs $175. The first version of the machine runs on Advanced Micro Devices' 433MHz Geode LX-700, an x86-architecture chip that is slow by the standard of mainstream processors but consumes little power and costs less. OLPC is close to starting productionÂ of the XO. The group has already gone through four generations of test systems to refine the laptop's design. A production run of 300 machines was completed in August, a final preparatory step before the XO goes into mass production later this month or in early October. While OLPC has yet to decide whether or not to use Intel processors, Intel confirmed its engineers are developing a motherboard based on one of its chips for an OLPC laptop. That process required the engineers to start from scratch, since the current XO design isn't based on Intel's chips. "It requires a new design, a new product," said Leighton Phillips, the manager of Intel's World Ahead Program in Asia. The design, which Intel plans to submit for OLPC's consideration, will be based on either existing mobile chips, such as modified versions of the Celeron M called A100 and A110, or Silverthorne, an upcoming processor designed for small, mobile computers. The dual-coreÂ Silverthorne processorÂ will be made using a 45-nanometer production process and will be available early next year in different versions. Silverthorne's main advantages are lower power consumption and size. The chips are so small that Intel can fit 2,500 of them on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer, helping to keep unit production costs low enough for them to be used in handheld devices and low-cost computers. Whether Silverthorne is cheap enough to be used in laptops like the XO remains to be seen. "We're looking at ways to get there," Phillips said. If an Intel chip ends up inside an OLPC laptop, the laptop may be different from the existing XO design. That laptop was designed for use in harsh, rural environments with lots of dust and high humidity, but OLPC wants to develop laptops for use in urban areas where better infrastructure is available. "I can imagine there will be a family of laptops in terms of processor power and maybe there will be a larger form factor for older kids," Bender said. The discussions over an Intel-based laptop are part of wider talks on how Intel and OLPC can cooperate on technology and product development. Those talks started in July after Intel and OLPC signed an agreement that, among other things, gave Intel a seat on the group's board and prevents the two sides from disparaging each others' products. Besides putting an Intel processor inside a future OLPC laptop, the talks could see some of the technology developed by OLPC find its way into Intel's hands. For example, the chip maker is interested in the low-power screen technology developed by OLPC. Offering an OLPC laptop with an Intel processor doesn't mean the group will stop using AMD's chips, Bender said. "The Geode's been very easy to work with and hasn't been a limiting factor whatsoever," he said. As part of OLPC's desire to offer systems based on different processors, the group is looking to work with other vendors, in addition to Intel. One such company is Marvell Technology Group, which could see its Xscale processors, which the company acquired from Intel in 2006, also end up in future OLPC laptops, Bender said. "We want to have lots of choices, lots of people doing this, because there are lots of kids and lots of need," he said.
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U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  has introduced a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
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InfoWorld - A laptop under $100 could reach desks if a new venture formed by the formerÂ CTO of One Laptop Per Child, Mary Lou Jepsen, can deliver on its promises.
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All-in-one machine at Intel confab bears resemblance to new Apple PC. Also: High-tech sandwich boards?