Another Alternative

The HP Mini-Note and the Eee PC

The HP Mini-Note and the Eee PC

I’ve just received a demo unit of the HP Mini-Note, another UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC).  This machine is slightly larger than the Eee PC, about 10.5″ x 6.5″ and a little less than 3 lbs.

There are several differences immediately apparent between the two machines:

  • The keyboard of the Mini-Note is significantly larger than that of the Eee.  The manufacturer claims that the Mini-Note’s keyboard is 92% the size of a normal keyboard.  The touchpad is also larger
  • The screen is also larger.  The Eee PC has a 7″ screen and the Mini-Note has a 9″ screen.
  • This version of the Mini-Note is significantly more powerful than the Eee.  It has a 1.6 GHz processor and a built-in hard drive.  It is also running Windows (Vista…ugh!) and MS Office rather than Linux and Open Office (It also has a heftier price at $750 compared to $399 for the Eee)

It’s too early to give a review yet, but I’ll do some experiementing and let you know what I think.

6 thoughts on “Another Alternative”

  1. In all honesty there really is no point in even considering laptops for the individual students of Mater Dei. In general I feel that the technology is not developed enough to warrant buying laptops over regular desktops. The price efficiency is atrocious. Maintaining Laptops for 2,000+ Kids is nothing but a pipe dream as well.

    Given the way the school is currently mapped out, I think that it would be near impossible to integrate laptops effectively into lesson plans.

    1) Most teachers themselves aren’t too comfortable with using computers, and definitely aren’t comfortable enough to assist a classroom of kids with their computers.
    2) Most students only know how to use simple word processing and internet browsing. I assume that if laptops where purchased these would be the two solely used features. This would be a dreadful waste of potential.
    3) Suppling 2,000+ computers with Wifi, is going to cost a ton of money, and will be near impossible to maintain. Not supplying the laptops with WiFi would be completely pointless.
    4) Keeping everything up and running would be near impossible. If the network/server goes down, this could possibly ruin an entire school day’s lesson plan for teachers.
    5) Then there’s the obvious potential of students using their computers for illegal activities, etc.

    Now I know that there are ways around the points illustrated above. However, getting around those obstacles is either going to come at the cost of more money, OR at the compromise of wasting the potential of the laptops.

    I do agree that technology is becoming an increasingly vital tool to master, from both an educational and practical standpoint. Obviously it is important to educate the students in these new advancements to prepare them for the future. Therefore I propose having a mandatory computer class for students.

    This would work sort of like the art requirement. We could offer various forms of computer/ technology based classes (IT, Web Design, AP Computer science, perhaps some new courses like computer repair and service, video and music editing, etc) Plus we could have hybrid courses like Design which would fulfill both the Computer and Art requirements. This way we can properly educate kids on how to use computers, but we won’t have to pay the inefficient, unpractical price of equipping every student with an laptop.

    I do realize that this particular blog entry has nothing to do with acquiring laptops for the school. I am merely pointing out that in my opinion Mater Dei doesn’t have the means nor necessity to equip its’ students with laptops at this given point. Sure schools like Servite and Jserra might have laptops, but they have far less students in comparison to Mater Dei, and in the case of Jserra they have far greater tuition.

    Merely the thoughts of a humble student,
    Patrick McNally

  2. Here’s my thought on the actual computer mentioned in this blog entry.

    This machine has the speed, and capabilities of a laptop, but the mobility of the eee PC. For all intensive purposes we’ll label this as a hybrid of sorts between a conventional laptop and the eee PC.

    The main problem that I have with this machine is that it truly is an underpowered overpriced laptop.

    The screen size, and keyboard size makes it a little too big in my opinion to warrant it as being an “Ultra Mobile Notebook”. In which case if it’s not going to be ultra mobile you’d be better off getting a full blown laptop for the price.

    With the bigger screen, and more powerful processor, as well as a built in hard drive, this machine most likely will have a fairly weak battery life. This is due to the fact that it is so small that a hefty battery most likely won’t be available to properly power it. Plus, assuming this machine doesn’t have a solid state drive, the battery life is going to be even weaker.

    The computing power, as well as the extra features (such as extra ports, expandability, etc) on this machine are nowhere near to what a conventional laptop offers.

    To simply express my thoughts. $750 is too close to a laptop’s price to warrant the purchase of this machine. A laptop will have more power, more expandability, and more features to warrant a purchase over this machine. While this machine, doesn’t offer the mobility to justify the underpowered specs, and limited features for the price of a full blown laptop.

    If this was offered at 500 even 600 dollars it would be a nice, reasonably hybrid. But, it’s just way too close to the price of a full blown laptop right now.

    These are just my observations based solely on the tech specs of this machine.

    Humbly,
    Patrick McNally
    –Mater Dei Student–

  3. I agree in concept with all the points you are making (in fact they comprise the bulk of my nightmares as I contemplate moving forward on this!). However, I want to propose to you a slghtly different way of looking at this.

    I envision the UMPC as similar to a calculator. Students bring calculators to school every day. They use them as they see fit or as directed by a teacher, but they are not a schoolwide maintenance problem. I don’t think that these smaller machines can replace a large desktop machine with tons of processing power. However, think about them as expanding student abilities in all their classes. The two key functions I see used on a daily basis are word processing on Open Office or one of the online word processors (BTW have you tried Buzzwords yet? I think it is unbelievably elegant) and Internet communications and research. The size and price change the model from “lugging my computer to class” to “my computer is always with me when I need it.”

    Anticipating the response to some of this, I realize that the idea of bringing 2300 machines onto the network (even if only for Internet access) is a daunting task. I also recognize the concerns with battery life. Beyond this, I worry about students using class time to IM their friends, and security for assignments and tests jumps to an entirely differnt level.

    HOWEVER, students today will live in a world where they will have high-level computing ability with them all the time (read my blog post on all they things I can do with my smartphone). I question how realistic it is to train them in an environment that is completely different from their future lives. What is the value of education that has to be translated into application?

    I will be performing some limited experiments with UMPC’s next year (probably using room 503). I hope that these will give use more direction for future choices.

    I invite your comments.

  4. Here my two cents,

    This past holiday season I broke down and purchased an OLPC through the Give One Get One program. I purchased it for 3 reasons.
    1) It supports my idea of collaborative, hands on learning, and a rejection for the current textbook style approach.
    2) I could use it as an e-book reader and carry it around as a school text book, to save my back (Heck, I only had to charge it once a week, and that’s 3 hours a day with wifi turned on for me).
    3) It supported cheap education in third world countries, because my purchase purchased two laptops, one for my self, and one for a child whose life I am changing.

    After practically 6 months with the laptop, heres my tried and true evaluation of each of the 3 points I made.

    1) The laptop itself uses a variation of Linux called Sugar, optimized for educational and lightweight and underpowered laptop usage. When I say underpowered, I mean underpowered. It has a 433 MHz AMD processor, 256 MB of ram, and 1GB of storage. That’s it! That’s why the OLPC was the so called $100 laptop. For one thing, the highly optimized OS handled very well. It’s boot time was approximately 30 seconds (same as my intel Mac Mini, and much faster than my 3.0Ghz Core 2 Quad 64-Bit windows gaming machine) And even though it only had 433Mhz of power, I could barely notice any slowness. Only problems were with launching the web browser. That took about 30 seconds. And here I go getting side tracked with details.

    How exactly does this laptop encourage hands on learning, and reject (or more respectfully, modify) the current textbook approach?

    The laptop came preloaded with TONS of educational activities and links (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities) to download eons more. I’m not going to go in-depth on the activities but rather the potential. The applications are coded with Python, an interpreted language. Applications can be designed and written quickly and efficiently for virtually any task. There is a view source button on the keyboard that can enable students to go in and modify the application even as it is running. This proves good for the educational process because then there will be students enterprising enough to modify the application, and present it to their teacher giving them a much more powerful program in the long run. Real world data from the deployments shows that this dream has become a reality and much of their code is in the repository (see above).

    2) This is where it gets interesting. My plan was to locate all or most of my textbooks in ebook form. Well, this failed, dramatically. Nevertheless, I still wanted to see this succeed. I decided to continue to apply this strategy, and scale it down, replacing a 5lb 1,100 page text book with a 2.5lb laptop. (real world weights). I figured out how to quickly and efficiently scan pages from a textbook and compile them into a PDF usable from the OLPC’s e-book reader. I decided to go for my 3rd block class with my favorite teacher, Mr. Harris, who seemed rather enthusiastic about it. I wind up using it in class for two days. It was an epic failure. The laptop was designed for an educational environment, so it should feel at home, right? No. The problems I found in my experiment were that the laptop is optimized for cloud based computing and education and that I still had to carry around my text book, for emergencies. The cloud based computing failed because I had no wifi. (A remedy which could be fixed if it was an official school foray into laptops as an educational source.) I carried around my text book because I found that with the OLPC’s screen, some text was rather hard to read and that when it was in hi-resolution e-book mode (a real promising feature, read up on it) the pictures which we discussed in class were pretty much impossible to see. Also the user interface was clunky and slow and navigation on the laptop was buggy so It was tough to navigate.

    I gave up on the laptop as an educational source because, as much hope as I had for it, education simply isn’t ready at this stage for students to have their own computers.

    3) This point honestly explains itself. It’s a laptop for a kid in Africa! How does it get better than that?!

    So now, 6 months later, I put the OLPC on eBay, and it sold for $360. Mater Dei is simply not ready for students to have laptops.

    One thing I must say is that I am extremely enthusiastic about your attempts to modernize Mater Dei and the educational community, and that you are taking an unprecedented step in allowing students to contribute in this process.

    Alex Guichet
    http://alexguichet.com
    MD Sophomore

  5. After reading both of the above posts. I have to agree with Alex. Mater Dei just isn’t ready for laptops. I personally don’t believe it is practical or necessary yet. Perhaps in the next 5-10 years laptops will become more practical, but as far as I am concerned I don’t expect to use a laptop during my time at Mater Dei. I think we have all come to this conclusion already.

    However, I do recognize the need to educate kids on how to use technology, but I think that the school should offer classes to help train kids with computer applications that would otherwise be difficult for students to figure out by themselves. The reason why I have enjoyed the two computer based courses that I have taken at Mater Dei (Design, and Information Technology) is because I found them to be incredibly useful and practical in my everyday life. Had I not taken these courses there is no way that I would acquire the skillset that I currently have. Even if I did my best to read tutorials, etc on my own.

    The way I see it, kids don’t need a computer with them to learn English, (at least right now) but they DO need a computer to learn how to do things like edit film and music, design art, program various applications, etc. I guess the point that I am trying to make is that instead of trying to integrate technology into subjects that would otherwise be fine without having technology. We should teach kids to utilize things that are completely unique to technology. By the time that kids start needing to have a computer with them 24/7 said machine will be intuitive enough for most Mater Dei graduates to figure out by themselves. Therefore, I propose that the emphasis should be about teaching our students unique skills in aspects of technology, that most people won’t regularly pick up from daily use on a computer. As for preparing for the future, I think it’s just about impossible in the technology world. The only thing that I believe can be accomplished is to teach kids how to learn through practical application, to use trial and error, etc. This way, regardless of how different technology is in the future, by using these basic techniques, students’ minds will be used to learning on a wide variety of foreign applications.

    I would also like to emphasize that these suggested classes should be almost 80% practical and about 20% instruction. The reason for this, is that I firmly believe that technology should be used as a practical tool to accomplish someone’s desires, not as a scholastic discipline packed with information that is hard learned, but easily forgotten.

    Ideally the instructor would explain a concept or technique within the application. Then explain the objective of an assignment in which case students must use the concept or technique discussed. Then the instructor should let the students come to the objective of the assignment by themselves, only offering technical assistance. No step by step instructions should be provided for the overall assignment.

    My reasoning for this is that, tools need to be used not explained. Someone could tell me all about how a hammer works. But until I actually use the hammer, and develop proficient technique with the hammer, my previous knowledge of the hammer is impractical. Furthermore, most people learn best when they figure things out for themselves, that way they store information in a way that they are comfortable with. A perfect example of this is comparing my friend Owen and I when it comes to using Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop. Owen prefers to use hotkeys so that he can save time, and get things accomplished quicker. Whereas I like to use the menus so that I can analyze my options, just to see if there is something that I might possibly have to use in the future. Our two ways of doing things are different, but they accomplish the same overall objective, and we use our tools to work with what’s best for us.

    In my opinion this is truly the only way to effectively teach technology. If instructors hold the student’s hands step by step, the student will focus on accomplishing each step within itself, as opposed to accomplishing each step as a means to accomplish the overall objective. If instructors spend too much lecturing then obviously the students will never get a chance to practically use the technology.

    To give a real world example. I would have to say using a similar format to Mrs. Wilson’s Design classes (which pretty much fit the above criteria) however, I would prefer having more time to spend on the assignments so that I could play around and discover more about the programs as opposed to having to worry about meeting deadlines.

    I apologize for going on an escapade of sorts. I just firmly believe in practical application. Technology based courses in my opinion are some of the few courses offered in high school which will consistently be used in a practical manner. Because of this, they need to be tremendously expanded, especially due to today’s world.

    Patrick McNally

  6. I must say that I do agree 100% on Patrick’s suggestions. Mater Dei is in need of some mandatory hands on technical instruction, but this doesn’t mean that students need to have their own computers. And no, visiting the Multi-Media Labs most certainly would not fulfill this requirement.

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