4th Generation Intel Classmate PC review

With the school semester now in full swing for K-12 grade students throughout the US, UK and much of the rest of the world. I wanted to bring to your attention a great computer I had the pleasure of operating for a few  months. The Intel® Classmate PC, with a base price-point of $500, is a viable solution for a parent seeking a computer for his child, or for any school looking to provide its students with a computer to complete tasks central to their education, while being rugged enough to withstand short drops, splashes of water and the occasional careless nature of younger children!

The 4^th Generation Intel® Classmate PC is manufactured by Quanta, thus it bears the model name “Quanta NL2” referring to its place as the successor to the first Intel® Convertible Tablet Classmate PC that  featured an 8.9” 1024 x 600 resolution, resistive touch display and ran on the dated, but reliable Intel® Atom™ N270 CPU. That model was released in Q1 2009. The NL2, the subject of this review, was released in Q1 2010.  In the one year gap between the physically similar Netbooks, some significant changes were incorporated.

Review; Look and feel

With size dimensions of 269mm x 39.5mm x 214mm at first glance this small Netbook looks slightly disproportionate, with an over-sized screen bezel, chunky design and awkwardly arranged extension that juts out past the screen at the bottom of the unit. When you lift the 10 inch Matte screen (and boot into Windows 7) you are introduced to a bevy of features that begin to counteract all the negativity you may have begun to feel about this Netbook. You first notice the webcam, and how it can be rotated 270 degrees for use as a front and rear facing camera, for more natural intuitive picture taking.  To the left of the screen sits the power button, above it three blue LED’s are vertically positioned, for power, HDD activity and wireless functions.  To the left side of the bezel are a quick launch button for the camera and a home button. At the bottom left of the screen are left and right click buttons for scrolling up/down and left/right through pages on e-books. On the left and right of the bottom screen bezel are a pair of one watt stereo speakers. Below the screen is an accelerometer-activated swivel, which allows the rotation of the screen to the left or right 180 degrees to facilitate easy viewing both indoors and outside.

Unlike some Netbooks, whose keyboards seem to be afterthoughts, the Classmate’s keyboard seems practically full-sized, with flat keys and a solid touch and feel. Immediately below the fairly wide and inviting multi-touch touchpad are large, separate, right and left click buttons.  In the back of the unit is an integrated retractable handle specifically designed to facilitate micro-mobility in the classroom similar to a small lunch box.  Reminiscent of the short-lived Apple® iBook G3™ “Clamshell” laptop, the Classmate PC’s corners are also rounded out in ‘clamshell’ style. The aesthetics of the unit are quite appealing with soft white complimenting a grey fox-style coloring on the inside and strong dark ‘no-nonsense’ industrial grey coloring on the outside.

Weighing in at 3.5 pounds, this diminutive portable makes itself noticed when you hold it.  All of that weight is compressed into a single, fairly small, durable and child-friendly product. But it does serve a purpose. It was intentionally designed to be rugged, and the company boasts that it can withstand drops from more than 2 feet.  Truthfully, I did not test that aspect of the Classmate.  It seems incredibly solid for a Netbook, and it has a rubberized coating on the top, bottom and rear covers of its chassis. This serves to protect it. Finger prints? Nothing to worry about! Scratches?  Not a problem! It has a water resistant keyboard, screen and touch pad.  In fact, holding the unit as a Tablet, cradled in my arms proved quite comfortable for short periods of time (20 minutes).

Classroom-oriented use, touch screen

What ultimately amazed me about the Classmate PC was just how enjoyable it was to use, as it was designed from the bottom up to be used primarily as an education-focused product.

Typing this review on the unit’s keyboard was a pleasure. Furthermore using the unit in “touch-optimized” Tablet mode allowed for the most creativity. The included featherweight stylus, barely 6” in length at first seemed inadequate compared to the rest of the ruggedized unit, but after using it, it held up well under standard usage such as one would use a pen.

The included ArtRage software made drawing on the screen delightful. A school investing in this convertible PC would be able to use the software to save money on art supplies such as crayons, stencils, papers, canvas and oils. Microsoft Journal, which creates a lined paper background against the screen made writing almost as easy as writing on actual paper. The only downside is the 10.1 inches physical size of the screen, which does not offer a lot of space to scribble notes on the side. While thanks to integrated palm rejection technology, it’s not an issue to place your palm on the screen while writing, it does diminish the amount of space one may feel is comfortable to write in. There is also a small dedicated piece of software by Pen Input Method which can be used for math equations and as an alternate to the onscreen keyboard/pen input panel included with Windows 7 Home Premium.

Performance

This is where things begin to get problematic.   On start up, with the upgradeable 1 GB of Ram, the Intel® Atom™ N450 clocked in at 1.67GHz just felt very slow.  The computer took nearly a minute to get to the login screen and than another one and a half minutes to load all of the proprietary bundled software.  (It might be useful to use a program such as Soluto to delay loading up some of the software until after start-up.)  As unfortunate as that is, remember this unit would mostly see action in the classrooms of schools that have probably just upgraded their computer labs from Pentium 4’s to Core 2 Duo CPUs, so the slow start-up would not be relevant to its intended use.

Webcam

This unit comes with quite an unusual webcam. Built into the top of the screen bezel, the 1.3MP, 30fps camera can actually serve as both a useful webcam and camera with its ability to rotate 270 degrees. (This can be useful to document bullying in the classroom in an almost discreet fashion.)  While using Skype to make a video call, the other caller said I looked just as good as if we were sitting right across from each other.

However, when I turned the screen left or right the connection would get choppy. This is probably due to the placement of the internal antenna on the top of the bezel where I was holding the screen as I turned it. There is an Accelerometer for auto screen rotation.  The included Arcsoft picture/video capture software made it easy to take snapshots and quick videos as well as an Easy Webcam App with annotation and digital archive.

Speakers

While most other Netbooks position their puny speakers towards the bottom of the unit, which often results in a largely muffled noise, this unit’s 1watt stereo speakers are placed on the bottom of the screen facing the user, thus, one can actually listen to music (though one would find the use of a headphone through one of the dual audio ports a more satisfying experience). Although not loud, the speakers produced a clear, rich sounding    Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”.  However, Metallica’s “One” failed to come through, as the underpowered speakers could not provide the proper bass or dynamic sound to do the song ‘justice’. Using the nifty pair of ‘line out’ ports, while riding the subway, a friend and I were able to enjoy an episode of Arrested Development without the displeasure of splitting a pair of headphones.

Video Playback

The integrated Intel® GMA 3150 GPU was able to handle 720p flash videos on YouTube, albeit the occasional hiccup. This was more to do with programs running in the back ground. Once they were closed it handled “Big Buck Bunny” in 720p flash like a champ.   While watching Pulp Fiction in 720p directly off the HDD, I did notice some occasional lag in playback. It choked as it attempted to put through Batman “The Dark Knight” trailer in 1080p. However, for the most part, it still proved watchable and the screen is bright and sharp whether one uses the Classmate inside or outside.

Inspirus Manager Education Software

A student account was created after setting up the administrator control for the education software. The Classmate PCs are pre-loaded with education-focused software and run hundreds of mainstream and popular applications. The particular software which came with my demonstration unit was meant for 1^st through 3^rd grade students. Very basic math software (70 ÷ by 10, 10 x 10) were the types of questions asked. None of the other software offered any true educational value. However schools purchasing this unit will be able to choose software tailored to their curriculum through Intel’s collaboration with local independent software vendors.

Apps

I took the liberty of installing the Intel’s App Store “App Up”.  After setting up my account I accessed the virtual store and was offered several free App downloads.  After a few moments, I was blasting Lego brick asteroids in a Tie-fighter.  After an almost immediate loss, I quit the game and opened Fruit Ninja which took me to a dojo where I sliced fruit. This mini game was perfect for a Tablet. With a simple Ninja-like stroke across the screen you can be slicing fruit and racking up points.  The App Store contains a healthy offering of Apps from Mini games to ‘Location-Aware’ programs.

Battery Life

This unit came equipped with a 4-cell, 2200mAh battery (a 6-cell 2400 battery is available as a very useful option), which Intel® claims should last 4.8 hours (their testing was with WiFi off and screen brightness set all the way down), the battery in my unit ran for only 3½ hours in “Standard” usage mode. “High performance” mode brought the battery life down to 2 hours. I did my testing with WiFi on, screen brightness set at 60% and switching between Microsoft Office Word and Google Chrome. Watching Videos managed to instantly cut down my battery life by 20%.

Final thoughts

With a base price of just $500, purchasing the Intel-powered convertible Classmate PC   should almost be a no-brainer. Almost.  If you are big on high tech, than I might suggest holding out for the release of the next iteration of this unit. If you are purchasing this for a child who you believe would benefit from ownership of it, than by all means get it in its current form. If you are purchasing it for self-use (presumably you’re not a child and have read this review in its entirety) than you understand the product and what it is   capable of – and what it cannot do.  As a low cost rugged convertible Netbook, I can say that at the time of this review it is the best bang for your buck that you can possibly get without spending $3000+ on a Military grade Panasonic Toughbook.  Finally, if you work for a school interested in purchasing this unit I strongly affirm that it is a good value.  It would be useful to upgrade these units to Windows 7 Home Premium, to install an additional Gigabyte of Ram and to obtain the 6-cell battery pack. Once upgraded, one will be able to take full advantage of the touch screen and Tablet functions that the unit is capable of and to get the increased operational speed to avoid frustration and to fully enjoy the unit’s multi-media potential.

Intel-Powered 4^th Generation Classmate PC specifications:

Intel® Atom™ N450 CPU (At 1.66Ghz, with Hyperthreading)

Intel® NM10 Chipset

10.1” 1024×600 Resolution display (Matte).   1366×768 optional (Included with my unit)

GMA 3150 GPU

2.5” 150GB Sata HDD (Can be swapped for SSD, which would provide a noticeable improvement)

1GB of DDRII Memory (Upgradable to 2GB)

1.3Megapixel Webcam (Can be rotated up to 270 degrees)

802.11 B/G/N WLAN

10/100 Ethernet

Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

2 x USB 2.0 ports

1 SDHC card reader

1 Kensington lock

GPS, WiMAX and 3G are all optional

HDD protection

Accelerometer

Spill proof keyboard, touchpad and screen.

4-cell battery (2200mHa cell). 6-cell battery (2600mAh cell) battery option available.

Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows XP and Linux options available.

Final Acknowledgments

I have an obligation to inform the reader that this unit is on loan from the Intel Demo Depot. This arrangement was made possible by the fine people of the Intel Classmate PC PR team, Chris Michaels, Connie Zheng and Nisha Deo – Thank you guys so much!