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According to Zumoblog, at the Channels Initiatives roundtable at IDF, Tom Rampone, vice president and general manager of the Channel Platforms group showed off several upcoming motherboards, notebook components and the newest version of Intel’s answer to the OLPC, the Classmate PC. This version will feature a swivel screen that can callow the student-friendly netbook to be converted to a tablet PC.

Not a lot of details are available, but the basic specs look promising, especially if the cost is kept down:

• Atom N270 at 1.6GHz
• 8.9 inch touchscreen with 1024×600 resolution
• SSD
• SD Card reader
• At least 2 USB ports
• Video out
• Integral handle
• Swivel webcam

According to Rampone this device should be released by the end of the year, though the actual model name has not been decided. Classmate 3 is out since they do not wish to imply that the Classmate 2 currently for sale is outdated or replaced by the tablet edition. Seeing as Intel seems to be in a pickle with this one, I am going to really summon up my muse here and suggest calling it Classmate 2 Tablet Edition.

Intel, just make my royalty check payable to Cash, thanks.

Zealot (468 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).