Chris - nicely done.
If possible would like your impression for education on the ASUS also.....
My son falls into this bucket.
He does have a Captivate which he uses effectively in school. While the campus is set for notebooks, netbooks and has wifi (all kids have their own id...) the teachers make poor use of these devices (extra work when they have to do the books also - they leverage last years lessons).
Good write up but my school dustrict (LAUSD) has a significant amount of evolving to do before they even get to wide spread device use.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Dell had sent me three of their flagship educational products for review. At the same time, I received a Motorola Xoom WiFi tablet for the day job. Given that Dell had sent a netbook, a hybrid convertible tablet, and a 7″ Streak tablet, the Xoom’s 10.1″ form factor rounded out a perfect test of the state of the art in ed tech personal computing. With my wife looking suspiciously at the rapidly multiplying devices, cords, and adapters, I set out to put these devices through their paces, letting my kids and colleagues beat on them mercilessly (well, not so mercilessly on the Xoom since I can’t send that one back).
Obviously, a hardware test featuring Dell and Motorola is hardly all-inclusive. There are plenty of other players in the ed tech personal computing game (perhaps most notably after Google I/O, Samsung and Acer with their Chromebooks which beg for a school that has embraced Google Apps for Education). However, the trend towards tablet usage, the popularity of the convertible netbook segment created by Intel’s Convertible Classmate, and the ongoing debate over the value of netbooks (ruggedized or otherwise) means that this shootout represents the most important form factors across much of K12. We’ll look at actual notebooks later and decide where their value lies in secondary education.
Click here to view a gallery of the hardware I’ve been abusing for the last month.
Dell Latitude 2120
Let’s start with the exact hardware. Dell sent me a Latitude 2120 netbook in a lovely shade of “Schoolhouse Red.” Honestly, I think my favorite feature of these netbooks is the dodgeball-style rubberized covering that won’t fingerprint, won’t slip out of kids’ hands, and protects the machine from bumps and drops. It’s a bit heavier than many netbooks, but the chunkiness is never a bad choice for younger users.
Dell largely markets these machines to K-8. While the spill-resistant keyboards are best-suited to juice-box laden children, they’re not bad choices for older students either. The keyboard may not be the best for 17-year old football stars, but it’s quite usable. Most likely, though, the Latitude will find niche users as tablets take over the world (more on that in a bit).
The 2120 I have, for example, sports a high resolution touch screen. It’s a resistive touch screen, so it’s no iPad with a keyboard, but many kids with development disabilities can handle a touch interface while their instructors and aids can make use of the keyboard. The touch screen works out of the box with Ubuntu Linux 11.04 as well as the included Windows Vista (yes, really, and no, I don’t know why they’re still shipping Vista) and the optional Windows 7.
The 2120 can also be had with antimicrobial keyboards and may be the only netbook that I would let my 17-year old take to school with him (he’s done in 3 of them so far, including a convertible Classmate, but needs to type his work). It’s a pretty tough little machine. I didn’t let him test the tablets. He’s not coming anywhere near my Xoom.
This ruggedization doesn’t come cheap (but prices are in line with comparably equipped Classmates). My model with the high-res touch screen, 2GB of RAM, Win 7 Professional, and a dual-core Atom processor topped out around $600. They are, however, Latitudes, and Dell not only expects 4-5 year lifespans, but continues to produce replacement parts and compatible docking accessories for much longer than they do for their other lines. Carts for the netbooks are quite cost-effective and include management utilities for the docked machines, so there is definitely value here. You simply have to decide if netbooks are the right choice or if tablets really will take over the world.
