Intel, Asustek to make low-cost laptop

SAN FRANCISCO, US: Intel Corp. detailed plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek Computer Inc., the world's largest maker of computer motherboards, to make a notebook PC that would cost as little as $200 aimed at the education market in developing countries.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, has distributed laptops to children in developing countries for years, but has yet to put them into the kind of mass production planned by another group, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.

Intel and Asustek's low-cost PC would be a fully-fledged, low-end notebook, while the OLPCs are green-and-white plastic, kid-friendly laptops that can be powered with hand cranks when electricity is not available. They cost about $180 each.

"It's another way of solving the same problem," said Sean Maloney, head of Intel worldwide sales and marketing in a telephone interview ahead of his keynote speech at Taiwan's Computex, the world's No. 2 computer fair. "The world is a big place and there's room for lots of these things."

Intel's and Asustek's move comes after the OLPC Foundation said last month it expected to start delivering millions of its low-cost notebooks in October. It is the foundation's most ambitious attempt yet to provide the devices, which analysts say could shape PC industry growth in developing countries.

Maloney said the laptop will use a lower-end microprocessor as the brains of the notebook, but declined to give further details. It will likely have 7- or 10-inch diameter screens, either a traditional hard disk drive or a flash memory hard drive and wireless Internet.

One model will cost about $200, with others going up to around $400 or $500 for the PC, Maloney said. Asustek is also the world's largest maker of notebook PCs. The PC, available later this year, will use either a variant of the freely available Linux operating system or it will run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP.