April 18th, 2008
First Classmates available for pre-order in US (for $500!)
M&A Technology is offering 2nd-generation Classmate PCs on its website for $499. Noting that they are available for pre-order now, it’s not clear when they will actually ship. However, the ship date is not the problem as I see it. The problem is the price.
$500 is too much for these little netbooks. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Classmates and I think the market in Ed Tech for devices like these could be huge in developed markets. However, $300 is a pricepoint at which I could roll these out. $250 is better. $499 for a 9″ screen, a Celeron processor, half a gig of RAM, and Windows XP Home (the only option from this reseller) is not going to cut it.
$500 can buy me a mainstream laptop if I do some serious bargain shopping. $700 is an easy price to hit for dual cores and 2GB of RAM these days. Sure, I don’t get the rugged features of the Classmate, but for $500, I can live with that.
The Classmate represents both innovation and compromise. Those compromises are well worth it in this market for $300 a piece. Not so for $500. A note to OEMs rolling out Classmates in the next few months: price it right or don’t bother. I’ll at least take an HP MiniNote for this price.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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