Darren Waters at the BBC is spending the next week tinkering with one of Intel’s Classmate 2 laptop computers. In the video above you can see he’s also spent some time with the OLPC XO Laptop, and he clearly highlights some of the differences between the devices. While both are aimed at developing nations, the XO represents a whole new way to think about computers, while the Classmate is designed for Windows XP and lets users experience computers much the same way that users in developed nations would. But smaller.
Waters reports that the Classmate 2 is capable of performing most individual tasks without a problem, but thanks to its poky processor it doesn’t hold up to multitasking very well. Like the XO Laptop, the Classmate 2 uses mesh networking to share internet connections with other nearby computers.
We should be getting a full review in about a week, as well as a complete review from someone closer to the target audience, 9 year old Rufus Cellan-Jones who reviewed the XO for the BBC last year.