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Taking advantage over buzz surrounding netbook lately, Ambank’s Amstar promotion cleverly offering 100 HP Mini Note 2133 netbooks for its lucky potential customers.
2 netbooks given to the winners everyday for 50 days period. Nice huh? Not bad for a free netbooks (if lucky) when you open a new account.
Sony Viao P should more tempting 
The netbooks obviously gaining a lot of attention recently, thanks to the OLPC & Asus Eee PC who ‘invent ‘ such a cool device and open a way for fierce competition from other manufacturers. Like what I’d wrote yesterday, there are bunches of netbooks on display during my visit to KL’s Pikom PC Fair as well.
Come to the stat, Hitwise’s top 10 most searched for computers by UK Internet users during November 2008, shows that netbooks accounts for 1 in every 7 computer related search. It is also predicted that netbooks will continue to gain market on the expense of computers, especially during the ‘credit crunch’ crisis and the price that lower than its more & powerful sibling.
Started as a low cost computer as an alternative to a full-fledged computer, now netbook has been marketed as a gadget that peoples buy for mobility purpose or secondary computer. Such marketing was fruitful with millions of unit shipped so far.
Samsung NC10 surprisingly topping the Top Netbooks cart with Acer Aspire One and Asus Eee on 2nd and 3rd place respectively. This is a stark contrast with image of Acer Aspire One and Asus Eee which is very synonym with netbook before other player jump on the wagon.
And although Dell is the most search brand in November, Dell Mini Inspiron only ranked on distant 7th place. The stat doesn’t include netbook such as HP Mini or Lenovo Ideapad.
If I’m still studying, I wish that I’m attending school in Terengganu.(Terengganu is an oil rich state in Peninsular Malaysia). That is because none other than, there will be a notebook for me.
If you haven’t already known, Terengganu state government has allocated some millions of $$$ to provide Intel-powered Classmate notebook to each form 5 students, approximately 25,000 beginning next year (pst, for Cencurut, do you have form 5 kid?
Plus, the Classmate notebook will contain text books which has been transformed to PDF format with cooperation from DBP (Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka). So no more, heavy bag misery or ‘sakit badan’ symptom due to that..
There will also be a new facility being setup in Terengganu, with manufacturing capacity of 10,000 units per month to assemble the Classmate notebook. With this capacity, in a year, the whole Terengganu’s student will be equipped with notebook. I wish that it will be expanded to other states as well (if there is budget).
Photo credit to Utusan MOU ceremony
What is Classmate
What is Intel-powered Classmate PC? I’ve touched the base of it before. Intel-powered Classmate notebook is a low cost notebook, mainly targeted for student and low-end market like 3rd world countries. The objective is to reduce the cost-of-ownership of notebooks, hence increase the computer literacy among the communities all over the world.
Sibling of OLPC and sharing the same vision, Classmate has a slight advantage over its other siblings, with the backup of electronic ‘big boy’ Intel, plus the better hardware and software.
Since its first inception 2 years ago, it is now on its 3rd version, even though the latest one has yet to be in production. Among the enhancements are, notably bigger hard drive, powered by power-saver Intel Atom and having built-in camera. More below.
Version
Judging on the photo by Utusan, most likely, students will get the second generation Classmate. So this what you get (if you’re a form 5 student in Terengganu). You’ll get a notebook with built-in camera, decent processor, bigger hard drive (refer more above) and many more.
The 3rd version of Classmate is not yet available even on the ClassmatePC website, but this videos should provide you ideas about how nice the version 3 is. Among the features that I bet will sure gain a huge attention is the touch screen, transformable to tablet PC and etc.
How much.
FTEC, Classmate distributor in Malaysia which is re branding Classmate to be SmartBook sells the first and 2nd version for RM999 & RM1299 respectively. It is relatively expensive compared to Asus IEEE or Acer One who has superior design and competitively priced.
Report from NST said that each notebook will be sold to state government for RM999, which is a steal as compared to what is available in the market. This is including the software. Terengganu has allocated some 35 million for this project.
Some photos below
Classmate third version in tablet mode. More photos from DeviceGuru
Colourful casing
