I am reading this article by Christopher over at ZDNet which argues that netbooks are great for educators because they are low cost, small enough to fit in cramped up backpacks and small desks, easily disposable than their average laptops and most importantly does everything that most students need from a computer.
In an excerpt:
So netbooks are great for us educators. Fine. We’ve established this. What Microsoft has established, however, is that, although Windows 7 will run well on netbooks (unlike Vista), most netbooks will be loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition. According to the Wall Street Journal,
Netbooks are expected to run better on Windows 7 than Vista, which required more powerful hardware than netbooks offered. To encourage use of the new software, the company plans to offer a version called Starter that will be inexpensive but comes with significant limits. Besides only running three application programs at a time, Starter will also lack some spiffy graphical interface features of other versions of Windows 7.
He goes on to argue that Linux is better on netbooks because it’s low cost, requires less power, etc.
While I agree, more than three decades has past and people would rather buy Windows than use Linux. I can’t understand why this doesn’t stick to the cranium of Linux fans? The first release of netbooks has Linux all over the place but as it turned out majority of these machines were shipped back by the customer because they simply didn’t like Linux and didn’t think spending time learning the system is worth it. As educators, use the technology that most enterprise use since this is the technology you ought to be teaching your students.
Netbooks would be powered by Windows XP and there is no stopping netbooks being powered by Windows 7.
Read the article here.