A month ago I picked up a story (Asustek's Classmate could challenge MIT's laptop, below) about Asustek's "plans to start manufacturing own-brand notebook PCs with prices starting at $249 or less". The company was planning four Asus-branded notebooks derived from the Intel Classmate PC. And as Bobbie Johnson reported for a recent Technology cover story, the Classmate effort has upset the people behind the One Laptop Per Child project.
Asus duly announced what it calls the Eee PC at this week's Computex show in Taiwan, during a keynote given by Intel's Sean Maloney. According to PC Magazine, "two models were demonstrated: a $199 and $299 model." The horrible name signifies "easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work".
The Classmate is part of Intel's World Ahead Program.
We don't know the specs of the Asus machines, but Intel has a Classmate PC portal. This says the Classmate can run either Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office or Mandriva Discovery 2007 (Linux) and OpenOffice, so I'd assume the cheapest systems have Mandriva.
This isn't a Microsoft project, but the Classmate was sourcing its Microsoft software cheaply under the Microsoft Partners in Learning Program for Governments. I wouldn't have thought Asus's commercial notebooks qualified, and this could bump up the price of the Windows option.
Chip maker Via Technology also has a low-cost subnotebook project called NanoBook, which has been unveiled at the same show.
