Papyrus News

In my research on laptops in schools, I noted the great popularity of laptop programs, but also the challenges that were preventing these programs from expanding.  First, laptops were too expensive — they needed to fall below $250 to have a shot at serious penetration of the K-12 market.  Secondly, they were too heavy.  Nobody wants a 10 year old to be carting around an 8 pound machine all day.  Third, they needed longer battery life.  Laptop programs are hampered if kids can’t get through a school day without recharging.  And fourth, current laptops have far more power than children need.

The development of low-cost, small netbooks computers has thus been a great sign for educational computing.  And now it appears that future developments may be underway in this market that will go a long way to addressing most of these challenges.  Apparently, netbooks may soon be manufactured with the kind of ARM-based processors typically used in cellphones rather than the more expensive processing chips that have previously been used in desktop or laptop computers.  These ARM-based chips won’t run the full version of Windows, but they are fine for running Linux, which is all a netbook really needs.  They are also very cheap, and, importantly, consume only 10% of the power of a regular computer-processor, thus allowing much longer battery life. ARM-based netbooks will undoubtedly fall below $200, and probably drop well below that in the next few years.

These are the kinds of computers I would be looking toward if I were on a school board.  Students could then use Google Docs, Open Office for Linux, Firefox, Gmail, online photo editors, etc., further saving the district money.   You would be getting a much lighter, much cheaper machine with long battery life and 80% of the functionality of a full-fledged laptop at 30% of the cost.

For further discussion of the future of netbooks, see Liliputing and Wired.