At IDF Intel began pushing its second-generation Classmate PCs into the US and Europe.

That’s the son of the cheap widgets it’s been using to crush the altruistic prospects of the AMD-based One Laptop Per Child in developing countries.

Intel calls the things netbooks and they are nominally intended for children, but if grow-up fingers can manage Blackberries for the $300-$500 these netbooks will go for adults will find a way.

Intel intends to move a prospective third generation to its Atom chip, but right now the Classmate design Intel has given to a few ODMs uses a Celeron M with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and mesh network capabilities. (According to Forbes, which played with both the new Classmate and the XO from OLPC, Intel’s web facilities leave XO in the dust.)

With this second generation there is now a 9-inch LCD screen – as well as the original 7-inch – longer 6-cell battery life, 512MB of memory, a 30GB hard disk and integrated webcam.

Intel says it’s shock-resistant if dropped and the keyboard (as all keyboards should be, God knows) is water-resistant. Ash-resistant would be even better.

It supports XP and some versions of Linux and can have a pre-installed education software stack that supposedly makes it fit for classroom learning. Software and content will be available in eight languages.

Reportedly Amazon will be selling one of these things for $489 early next month. It’ll have XP, 40GB of storage and a gig of memory. It looks like it’ll be called the 2goPC.