Features

"...an antimicrobial keyboard, rubberized kickball-like exterior, and a special "network activity light" on the back of the lid designed to tattle to teacher when the kids are trading Pokemons online rather than paying attention to lessons."

Antimicrobial keyboard -- completely useless. This netbook will still spread germs. That is, unless you believe that kids will not touch the touchpad, touchscreen, or casing.

Network activity light -- pretty useless. If the kid was doing something they shouldn't be doing, they'll have the window closed by the time the teacher gets to them. At that point, how will the teacher know they were doing something wrong as opposed to the netbook downloading updates (Windows, antivirus, Java, Adobe, Apple, Google, Mozilla, etc). Most programs don't give you the option of specifying when to check for (or, in some cases, download) updates.

Rubberized case -- might actually be a good idea. Depending on the material, it may provide negligible protection from a drop, but a rubberized material will make it easier to grip and will resist slipping. At any rate, it's better than the glossy, easily-scratched-with-the-slight-breeze materials which seem to be the current fad.

I have to say, though, a 3-cell battery doesn't sound like much for a computer which is supposed to be designed for educational use (read: used for 6-8 hours between recharges). Dell's website says "3-cell or 6-cell 'Smart' Lithium-Ion Primary battery featuring Express Charge™" and "65W AC Adapter featuring cord wrapping".

Personally, this is my favorite quote from Dell (when selecting the operating system): "Please note that if you choose Microsoft Vista and also would like Microsoft Office productivity software, you will need to select a hard drive option with at least 80GB of space." That's a lot of space for an operating system and office suite.

Network activity light

Sounds like the most ill-inspired plot I've heard today (although it's only 12:30 am, so there's plenty more room for more bad ideas yet). I bet it will sell wildly to school IT "professionals" who think that the Internet is the web, so if the light is blinking they must be using the blue e...

Scrub away, scrub away ...

"So much for Germ Free Adolescents"

::heh:: Preempted me, Austin :-)

God save the Queen!

Even being a geek

I find it sad that we're encouraging schools to outsource all teaching functions to machines.

It's just a gimmick of course, netbooks, laptops, electronic whiteboards, all complete nonsense. It's just an excuse to waste time looking at fancy graphics and not really learning anything.

A couple of hours of decent quality IT lessons a week is all you need and with the money schools are throwing at laptops, ipods and other assorted crap you could kit the IT class out with state of the art workstations, on which they could learn how to do stuff that's actually useful.

Had some gimmicky rubberised toy computer been central to the learning of my class when I was at school I'd have been the first person to try and hack it, just for yucks.

Network activity light?

I wonder if the designers actually know anything about networks at all, or in fact have ever seen an ethernet activity light...

Questionable design decisions

>"network activity light"

...when "lids down + into hibernation mode" would be the more obvious chioce if trying to make sure kids are paying attention rather than sneakily faffing.

>"cart/docking station that holds 24 of the netbooks"

...so a good chunk of classrooms will need to buy two (if each child has a machine each), rather than designing one to hold 30 or so (which would take into account almost all class sizes). That's some sneaky business sense.