Intel Classmate PC lands in UK for £239

Eee bandwagon rolls on

By Tony Smith, 17th July 2008

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Intel's kid-friendly cut-price computer concept has come to the UK courtesy of local supplier Actronix.

Dubbed the JumPC, the Small, Cheap Computer is based on a 900MHz Intel Celeron Mobile processor and the chip giant's 915GMS chipset. It has 512MB of DDR 2 memory on board and 2GB of Flash storage - though you can select a 30GB HDD instead.

JumPC: Intel's Classroom PC, coloured orange

The unit has an Eee PC-style 7in, 800 x 480 display; two USB ports; 10/100Mb/s Ethernet and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. There's a webcam too.

It ships with Windows XP Home Edition pre-loaded, and Actronix is also bundling EasyBits' Magic Desktop software to provide a more straightforward, child-oriented UI to the laptop's features. An integrated handle makes it easy for nippers to lug the laptop around.

Easy to handle

All this comes in at £239, the supplier said. It's taking advance orders through its website, though the machine won't go on sale until early August, it admitted.

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Posted Monday 21st July 2008 07:42 GMT

Gerry

There is an alternative to learning ICT based on MS Windows

To all of you that think the world is taught computing on MS Windows, take a look at www.theingots.org - technology neutral ICT learning taking place in our schools today.

Posted Friday 18th July 2008 08:15 GMT

Matt

title

I support specifically primary schools, many parts of the curriculum can be delivered using open source software this is true, but just as much cant, support/lesson planning software again isnt availiable... a couple of examples - self leveling, maths software - there are only a couple of titles available on the windows platform that are any good and none in an open source flavour - this would be where these scc would excel - individualised personal learning.

The curriculum calls for video editing and animation - we have (crappy but very easy to use) usb video cameras and editing software (with ready to use samples) designed for children - not seen any support in that way in open source.

Control and modeling - again, usb connected programable roamers and a lego mindstorms - no linux support - oh unless you expect a 7yearold to use a command line based editor! (although that would be a nice thing to be able to do!)

in not knocking open source or linux at all - I have an eeepc myself, my main desktop PC runs IRIX, back in 2000 I was in a partnership to explore opensource and thin client technologies to support schools, we use audacity, paint.net, sebran, and a few other titles, but there just isnt the maturity yet, things are getting better and the applications are slowly coming along, but we are still a little way off.

finally - at the end of the day the majority of pc's at home and in the workplace are Microsoft windows based - until that changes it makes sense to teach kids what is mainstream.

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 23:15 GMT

dek