If you think the Classmate PC has a Fisher Price/cartoonish look and feel, you should see the prototypes. And now you can, thanks to an exhibit in Brazil.

Much like the OLPC XO laptop, these early designs for the Classmate PC challenge the notion of  what a typical laptop looks like. Sure, there’s a screen, touchpad, and keyboard on all of them. But they’re built to be rugged and to withstand use by school children in demanding environments.

The concept shown in the image above could have been used in tablet mode, thanks to a rotating screen. To see some of the other concepts, check out this article by Brazillian site Zumo.

via Engadget

I have two bits of MSI Wind-related news to share today. First, Wilson Azevedo wrote in to let me know that an MSI Wind clone will be hitting Brazil soon. The computer will be released by a company called Mirax and will be known as the Mirax Freedom.The specs are pretty much identical to the US version. For $999 Brazilian (about $627 US), you get a 10 inch display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive.

Closer to home, J&R has posted a product page for the MSI Wind. Although the US retailer says the computer isn’t shipping yet, it’s worth noting that J&R is listing a unit with a 6-cell battery and a $549 price tag.

Originally MSI had promised to release the computer with a 6-cell battery for $499. But the global battery shortage made it hard to supply 6-cell batteries, and MSI knocked $20 off the price and 3 cells off the battery before releasing the PC this month. It’s not clear at the moment whether J&R’s price reflects the actual price of a 6-cell MSI Wind notebook. But it wouldn’t be a huge suprise if MSI decided to jack up the price for the higher capacity battery. Notebook batteries are notoriously expensive.

[via Mike Cane]