Eagle-eyed Steve caught the following information in an Intel PDF from the Intel Developer Forum: the third-generation Classmate PC is expected to offer touch Tablet capabilities. The device is slated to appear late this year in the price range of $290 to $440 and of course will be powered by Intel’s Atom processor.Having used touch-screen Tablet PC devices for the past two years, I’m wondering about the whole idea. I’m all for promoting Tablet PC technologies but will the experience be positive or negative for the target audience? Students and other end-users might end up abhorring the vectoring issues we’ve experienced and could possibly equate that to all Tablet PCs, which would be a tragic inaccuracy. The picture in Steve’s snip shows a swivel screen to provide an an optimal writing experience, so my hopes are high, but we’ll have to see how this develops. This could all be a moot point if the 3rd-gen Classmate will contain both a touchscreen and an active digitizer, but at these prices, I really don’t think that’s the case.One other question: it’s clear that will likely qualify as a ULCPC or Ultra Low Cost PC, and therefore Windows XP would be allowed on it. Does the Tablet Edition of XP have a stay-of-execution until 2010 also, or will the Tablet features be something from the Linux world?The more I look at the screen snip, the more I wonder if there will be four distinct “flavors” of this Classmate model. The price variation for the “multi SKP path” means yes, there will be multiple configurations or editions. Could there be four, namely from the top box: Standard, Touch, Tablet, and eReader? Each could have a slightly different feature set. Standard would be your plain vanilla Classmate. Touch could offer the same model, but include a touch screen. Tablet would then build upon that with the swivel screen and eReader…. shoot, I was on a roll there…
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