Netbooks – the new school standard?
Posted in This Just In... on June 29th, 2009 by gkrakow
From the first time I got to see an Asus Eee PC in person I knew I was looking at something that would change our views of portable computing. In the year and a half or so since that meeting in San Francisco, Eees – and little netbooks from other manufacturers have taken off big time.
Industry analysts are predicting that small, portable, inexpensive netbooks will account for as much as 30-percent of all computer sales by the end of this year. That makes 100-percent sense in a down economy.
Many manufacturers have jumped on the netbook bandwagon: MSI, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell all make terrific netbooks – but it seems as if Dell may have discovered the holy grail of netbook marketing: K-12 school systems.
It’s a great idea. The Latitude 2100 can be configured to a school district’s — and a particular student age group. For instance, the 2100 is a standard netbook with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory, a 10.1-inch screen, a 16 GB solid-state drive or hard drives as large as 250 GB, 3-cell or 6-cell rechargeable battery packs, Wi-Fi (802.11g or optional a/g/n), Bluetooth and 10/100/1000 Ethernet.
But, the 2100 also comes with bright, colorful, durable, rubberized cases, an optional carry handle, optional shoulder strap, optional touch screen and a choice of Ubunu Linux, Windows Vista or XP. You can even order them with special keyboards featuring antimicrobial protection.
As you might expect, Dell says they have seen lots of interest in their Latitude 2100 line of computers which were announced just last month. They reports that more than 500 U.S. school systems have purchased 2100s for their students.
If you check Dell’s Website, prices for the 2100 begin at $369 for 512MB of RAM, 16GB solid-state memory, Linux device. Hard drives add $20-$85. An extra 512MB of RAM costs $30. The big battery adds $25. You get the idea. I am pretty sure that bulk discounts apply.
I’m guessing that this is not good news for the people from the One Laptop Per Child organization.
Their XO computer “for students in the developing world” has recently had a version 1.5 hardware refresh (faster Via processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage) and a new design, version 2.0, is in the works.
OLPCs are still a lot cheaper to buy (or in reality buy and give away). They cost you $199. But OLPCs are not as fast or versatile as modern-day Linux or “Wintel” netbooks. That’s not a problem in developing world markets – but is if they want to compete here in the United States, Europe, etc. The OLPC people are going to have to move quickly to keep up with Asus, Dell and the others when it comes to providing modern computing tools for the next generations of users.