CNet has an article about Google’s stripped-down Chromebook laptops, and their placement in schools. In a speech at the Florida Educational Technology Converence yesterday, Rajen Sheth, Google’s leader of Chromebook work for business and education, announced that hundreds of schools across 41 states have outfitted at least one classroom with Chromebooks. Three schools in Illinois, Iowa, and South Carolina will be outfitting all their students with the devices—over 27,000 in all. The schools appreciate the advantages the device offers of constant updates, cloud storage, and “invisibility” in terms of booting and use—teachers can focus on instruction rather than technical...

Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader has noticed that Augen—the cheap-Chinese-junk e-reader, tablet, and netbook company that placed some rock-bottom-priced units in Kmart last year—has apparently bitten the dust. Hoffelder heard from a woman whose warranty-serviced Augen unit was never returned. When she tried to find out had happened to it, the woman discovered that Augen’s website was down (and has been for over a month), and neither she nor Hoffelder got any responses to emails sent to company reps. While this is not necessarily conclusive proof, it certainly looks bad for the company. From what I...

Plenty of hybrid tablet/laptop devices are on their way. Dan Ackerman on CNet reports on four prototypes that were shown at CES—tablets with keyboards that flip out from behind, or slide out of hidden slots, and so on. These could offer the benefit of tablets for easy reading and net surfing, then turn into full-fledged Windows netbooks with keyboards when more physical input is needed. Ackerman wonders what the best name for such a device would be, however. “What should one call a tablet with a sliding or foldout keyboard? A laptab? A keylet? A tabtop? A keyvertible?” ...

The Financial Times seems to think the time is now for its employees to be using tablets. PaidContent reports that the company is offering a £300 or $480 rebate to its 1,800 staff against purchase of an iPad or other tablet. Employees who already have a tablet will also receive the rebate. The Dell Inspiron Duo, that 10.1” netbook that has a revolving screen for use as a tablet, will be available for pre-order soon and start shipping in December. The base model will start at $549 (£449). Engadget has a brief review of the specs and a short...

Pixel Qi is creating a new device that may well be the first of its kind—a self-contained 10” Pixel Qi monitor that connects to a laptop or “even some phones” (or, for that matter, a desktop) using wired or wireless USB. Pixel Qi’s 10” $275 swap-in displays had been available for Samsung N130 and Lenovo S10 netbooks, but they required end-users to install the parts themselves. This new device would act as a fully-powered stand-alone monitor, useful for more screen area or for showing someone else screen data. As far as I know, nobody’s come out...

The Gadgeteer has a review of an interesting-looking gizmo, the tyPad wireless Bluetooth keyboard case for the iPad. This $129.95 case combines a binder-style case and a Bluetooth keyboard, effectively turning the iPad into a laptop. (Although the review doesn’t mention Sena, the picture of this keyboard is identical to the Sena case/keyboard combo Paul mentioned at the end of August.) The review notes that the case is sturdy enough, and has a number of useful features, such as the ability to rotate the iPad 90 degrees to type in either a landscape or a portrait configuration. But...

Even though iPads and other tablets have largely usurped the limelight, netbooks are not going gently into that good night. And with good reason. The netbook is still a perfectly functional form factor for when you need a miniature alternative to a laptop, and could be great for e-reading if you’re willing to overlook the awkwardness of the mini-laptop form factor (or simply turn it on its side to use it like a tablet with a large sideways keyboard hanging off of it). Here are a few interesting netbook-related stories that have surfaced recently. Augen, More Often ...

The iPad is certainly becoming popular in education. One of the latest schools to experiment with iPads as a teaching tool is the Stanford University School of Medicine, which will be looking at using iPads to lighten the textbook load on students, Mediabistro’s GalleyCat reports. Given that medical students have to study anatomy, the iPad’s color screen with its easy ability to zoom at a touch could prove very useful for examining pictures and diagrams. (We previously covered another Stanford institution, the Stanford Engineering Library, getting rid of many of its paper books in favor of electronic equivalents.)...

Indian Android news site Androidos.in has broken the news that the $35 “home-grown” tablet touted by the government of India (and lauded by OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte) looks suspiciously similar (that is to say, identical) to Chinese manufacturer HiVision’s Speedpad Android tablet. AndroidOS reports that HiVision’s tablet was first seen at CeBIT in March, 2010, where it was predicted to retail for about $100. Androidos is not pleased by the discovery that this tablet, claimed to be the result of development at India’s top engineering colleges, has apparently turned out to be a Chinese import in actuality: ...

On CNet, Erica Ogg poses the question, “So, who’s still buying Netbooks?” She posits that the netbook craze is a tech fad that has been fading over time, citing figures showing the number of netbooks shipped falling quarter to quarter as the manufacturers gear up to jump on the next fad, chasing the popularity of the iPad. Some have long complained that the netbook is a solution in search of a problem, featuring a too-small screen wedded to a too-small keyboard. The lack of built-in optical media renders installing software a challenge (I’ve spoken to a couple of...

Google’s Android OS has become pretty much the go-to operating system for cheap tablets and e-book readers these days. But what of Google’s other OS, ChromeOS, that is rumored to be hitting tablets by Black Friday? If you’re curious, and have a computer that is hardware-compatible and a spare USB drive, you can actually try it out and see for yourself. ReadWriteWeb notes that a developer going by “Hexxeh” has been compiling both a modified Chromium (the developer version of Chrome) build called “Flow” and an unmodified, straight-developer build called “Vanilla”. These can be downloaded and placed on...

Engadget has obtained marketing materials indicating that the CVS pharmacy is going to stock a $99 Sylvania-branded Windows CE netbook, and a $179 “LookBook” color e-book reader. From the illustration, the Sylvania looks like yet another rebranded cheap Chinese smartbook. If it’s similar to some of the ones I found while searching for other cheapie netbooks, it probably won’t even be able to install new Windows CE applications so will be limited to what’s already installed. And of course, the savvy consumer will recall that you can get significantly more able refurbished Eee Linux netbooks for only...