Possibly inspired by Nicholas Negroponte and his $100 laptop, Intel is reportedly now planning to bring its range of low-cost 'classmate PCs' to India.

It was sometime around the middle of 2006 that Intel brought the first 60 classmate PCs to India for a pilot test. By the end of the current year however, Intel plans to ship about 100 more such classmate PCs.

The first pilot test was conducted in December 2006 at the Delhi Public School, Vasundhara. The company will start the second round of pilots most likely at Navodaya Vidyalaya, also in Delhi.

A small laptop based on Intel's 900MHz Celeron-M processor, the classmate PC features a flash disk memory instead of a hard disk. As the name suggests, it is designed particularly for school going children.

Significantly, sporting a price tag as low as between Rs 9,000 and Rs 11,000, Intel's classmate PC is definitely seen as a direct and dangerous competitor to the AMD-powered One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

And, the original price of a classmate PC is learnt to be around $285 but as the company expects to manufacture in volume, prices are also expected to fall to about $200. Meanwhile, OLPC's laptop is currently estimated to cost around $175.

According to sources at Intel, bringing classmate PCs to India is part of the company's World Ahead Program where Intel works in conjunction with federal and local governments to be able to reach the next 1-billion PC and Internet users.