Thursday, April 6, 2006

Chip maker moves forward with plans to sell an affordable desktop PC in developing countries.

Jeremy Kirk

Intel has partnered with a Mexican telecoms company to sell an affordable PC designed for first-time computer users in developing countries. It’s the latest effort by technology vendors to develop products for emerging markets. Advertisement Intel said the PC would be a small, energy efficient system with “full-featured” PC technologies. It will be cheaper than typical PCs, with the price adjusted for local conditions and family incomes, Intel said, without providing a specific price. It will use a low-power Intel processor running either the Linux operating system or Microsoft’s XP Starter Edition, a stripped down version of the Microsoft OS for poorer countries.

The company has yet to determine who’ll manufacture the PCs, Intel said. It often produces reference designs for systems and then shops them around its PC-making partners. The PC sellers will decide which OS is used, Intel said.

One Laptop Per Child

It’s the latest candidate to put computers in the hands of everyday people in the developing world. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group, under founder Nicholas Negroponte, is developing a rugged $100 laptop for use in child education programs. Participants in that effort include Advanced Micro Devices, Google, News Corp., and Red Hat.

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Source: PC World (link opens in a new window)