Classmate no longer vapor, it seems...

Apparently, the Classmate platform that Intel announced last year is actually going to come to fruition. This has interesting implications from a musical standpoint, so I thought it worth mentioning here. Here is a little article that followed the announcement, that talks a bit about what the Classmate is. But that’s like “whatever.” Here is the money shot from today. Long story short, Asus will roll out a range of Classmate-based ’puters in Q3 ’07 that are priced from $199 to $549 (MSRP), have embedded Windows, 7” LCD, and a 1G to 40G flash drive.

Assuming it has a USB port (why wouldn’t it?) this would probably be a perfect computer for all kinds of tasks, from being a dedicated MIDI sequencer to being a soft-synth for live performance, to getting integrated in to a modular system. I can come up with 20 ideas off the top of my head, so I’m sure there are dozens more, since the top of my head is full of other stuff.