Barrett: There are hundreds of thousands of them out. The Portugal deal by itself is 500,000. Venezuela is a million.

IDGNS: So Portugal is manufacturing these locally?

Barrett: There's a private Portuguese company that's basically manufacturing off the reference design. I thought their approach was very smart. They want every kid to have a PC but decided not to give them all away. They subsidized them on the basis of parental income so there's a sense of ownership. Poor kids get them fully subsidized, medium-income kids pay part of the cost, and well-to-do families buy them. It's produced locally, so it creates economic development with the production and service contracts.

IDGNS: A lot of people say the next few billion people on the planet will experience the Internet through a cell phone or some other device, not a PC. Where does that leave Intel? Do you become less relevant or will you start making wireless chips for cell phones?

Barrett: Clearly the Atom processor and small form-factor devices like netbooks and MIDs [mobile Internet devices] are in that direction. And by the way, I don't necessarily agree with the question. There are three interesting form factors that will continue to exist -- the big screen of the TV, the interactive screen of the PC, and the small screen of simple, limited information-access devices. I see those three screens continuing to exist throughout the world. It's hard to say PCs won't be heavily used in poor countries when you see over 300 million Internet users in China.