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 support.

Students do like tablets such as the iPad, but they seem to be taking to Chromebooks just as well.

"Students love the tablet. I am not going to hide that from you," said Diane Gilbert, an English teacher at Kelly Mill Middle School in Blythewood, S.C., who’s taught with tablets in her classroom. She added, though, that Chromebooks have a place: "They will bow down and kiss your feet for a tablet or for a [Chromebook]. But I’m a language arts teacher. My goal is to have students publish their work–create and publish. The [Chromebook] is more alike to a laptop or a desktop in the ability to publish."

Which type of device is better for education? The iPad will allow for interactive textbooks, but there’s no reason that such textbooks couldn’t be used on the Chromebook as well—indeed, Kno’s textbooks can be accessed from any web browser. And the Chromebook’s keyboard and Google Docs word processor means that students can write papers and other creative works on it much more easily than they could on the keyboardless iPad. At a suggested retail price of $349.99, the Chromebook is $150 cheaper than the basic iPad, too—a big savings when it comes to schools buying tens of thousands of them.

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 heard, Augen’s products were consistent in their level of quality—consistently lousy, and not worth the money when for a little more you could often find refurbished brand-name products on such sites as geeks.com. Still, it’s kind of a pity not to have that cheapie option available.

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 manufacturers may well answer this question on their own—perhaps in as many different ways as there are manufacturers. I’d be inclined to suggest “tabbook” or “tabletbook”. But computer manufacturers never ask me these things.

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 hands-on video.

I’ve mentioned Virgin Mobile’s pay-as-you-go MiFi plan a few times as a way of retrofitting Kindle-style 3G anywhere-downloading capability to any and all of your wireless devices at once. Its plans to date were either $40 for a month of unlimited service or $10 for ten days of 100 megabytes.

However, now Virgin has introduced an “in-between” plan: $20 for a 1GB data limit in one month. If you didn’t mess around with bulky multimedia, you could download a lot of e-books in 1 GB. And since it’s month-to-month contract-free, you can raise or lower your commitment at any time, or even skip months altogether. The $20 plan only seems to be available through Wal*Mart or walmart.com for now. (Found via Gadgetell.)

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 with anything quite like this before; the closest thing has been some applications that let you use your iPad as an additional computer monitor. The Pixel Qi display would have the advantage of being fully readable in sunlight in either black-and-white or color LCD quality. No pricing has yet been announced.

If they just added a touchscreen layer that could simulate mouse taps, it might make for an interesting e-reading device: a tablet driven entirely off of a bigger computer’s processor power.

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 it also notes a few drawbacks, such as the lack of a right Shift key (which essentially kills the device’s appeal for me, a 100-word-per-minute habitual touch typist).

Still, the idea of a keyboard case for the iPad is appealing, and I’m sure sooner or later someone will get it right. It would be nice to have the versatility of a tablet/keyboard combo that can be separated to use just the tablet by itself.

Speaking of which, Gizmodo has an interesting piece on a “Voltron of computers”—a netbook that practically explodes into a tablet with capacitive touchscreen, a mini-tablet-style voice-over-IP videophone, a keyboard, a USB keychain, and a little USB-to-HDMI dongle. It runs on an ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 512 MB of RAM, 256 MB of onboard flash storage, and 802.11b/g/n wifi, and reportedly offers the ability to change OSes at the flip of a switch.

The $549 pricetag seems a little hefty compared to full-fledged Intel-based desktops and netbooks, but on the other hand you’re getting about three different devices for the price of one. It might be worth a look.

Here are a few interesting netbook-related stories that have surfaced recently.

Augen, More Often

Augen, the maker of the $100 netbook and $150 Android tablet we mentioned a couple of months back, is back, with a 10.2” 800 MHz ARM/256 MB RAM/2 GB internal storage Android 2.1 netbook, the GenBook 108, retailing via KMart.com for $189.99. Of course, the device won’t have access to Google’s Android store, but it could potentially still work as an Android e-reader and web browser, right? (Found via Engadget.)

But before you shell out for this, you should remember that the reviews of Augen’s other devices have been by and large not-great, and for the same amount of money paid to Geeks.com you could get an ASUS Eee PC 1000 Atom N270 1.6GHz 1GB 16GB SSD 10.1" LED-Backlit Netbook XP Home w/Webcam, 6-Cell & Bluetooth (Ebony), or something similar. Sure, it’s two years old and refurbished, but the specs still kick the Augen’s butt—and it can run full-fledged desktop apps, not just Android programs.

(You could also get a refurbished Augen Windows CE machine for $95, but bear in mind that they can’t have new applications installed on them—they’re just toys.)

Dude, You’re Getting a Tabletbook?

Engadget has a story on an interesting 10” Dell Inspiron Duo netbook prototype shown off at Intel’s IDF 2010 keynote that comes with an interesting swivel gizmo on the monitor. The screen is actually mounted inside of a frame, and can flip around 180 degrees so that when the lid is closed it appears for all the world to be a thick 10” tablet. Featuring a dual-core Atom N550 and running Windows 7, it should be out by the end of the year.

The Dell Latitude XT2 convertible netbook/tablet featured a swivel at the base of the screen, turning the entire thing around 180 degrees before closing it to make a tablet. The Inspiron Duo mechanism at least looks significantly less flimsy. And if it works as well as it looks, it would give its users the convenience of a tablet for media consumption combined with the versatility of an available hardware keyboard. Certainly looks like a nifty toy to play with to me.

Asus? Aces!

And speaking of the N550, Asus just introduced a new model of Eee PC, the 1015PEM, using a 1.5GHz dual-core N550 and featuring up to 350 GB hard drive and 1GB RAM. It comes loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition and starts at $349. Not specifically e-book related, but it can read e-books just as well as the rest of them. And again, it serves to show what a poor bargain spending $190 for an Augen Android device really is.

A netbook has the potential to be a decent alternative to a tablet for e-reading, with the added benefit that you can easily do things that are more keyboard-intensive, too. As the above stories demonstrate, there are a lot of choices available, both now and in the near-future—something that stands in stark contrast to the tablet field where there’s the iBook and then there’s…not much else.

As with anything, of course, the standard rule applies: caveat emptor. Be careful what you pay for.

(We previously covered another Stanford institution, the Stanford Engineering Library, getting rid of many of its paper books in favor of electronic equivalents.)

But colleges aren’t the only place that iPads are being used. A number of California middle schools are going to distribute 400 iPads in a pilot program for middle schoolers using an algebra teaching application. The results of the program will be studied and compared with those of an equivalent program just using textbooks.

I find myself skeptical of this program’s goals. It seems pretty clear it’s designed as a study of the effectiveness of iPad learning in theory, rather than as a pilot program for something that can actually be rolled out. Does anyone seriously think that California, whose recent state budget woes have become the stuff of legend, is going to be able to afford to give every middle school student an iPad?

And it’s also worth noting that Contributor Gary Price wrote a piece yesterday about a Florida high school handing out 2,100 Kindles to its entire student body (though I can’t actually link to it at the moment due to technical issues).

Of College Students and Laptops

There seems to be a growing assumption that fancy new laptops, iPads, and other new tech toys are necessary for college, in ways that were not true back when I was first in school. Many of the people I help in my tech support day job are college students who just got a new laptop for use at school and are having trouble setting it up. (Of course, some specific college programs literally do require laptops. Here Ben Hutchins writes about the ThinkPad W510 he was required to get as part of the University of Maine’s Electrical Engineering program.)

But Scott Merrill has an interesting editorial at TechCrunch suggesting that people shouldn’t get a new laptop for college—especially if they’re liberal arts majors. I’m not sure I can agree with all its points, but I find myself nodding along with most of them.

Merrill explains that all most students will need a laptop for, for the most part, is visiting course webpages and writing reports and papers. For that, they don’t need a top-of-the-line super workstation—an older used laptop from Craigslist running Ubuntu and OpenOffice will suffice for most of those needs. For things that it can’t do, college computer labs offer more than adequate facilities.

Latest and Greatest: More Hindrance Than Help?

He presents the lack of modern gaming and multimedia capabilities as not so much a drawback as a reason to spend time away from your computer in the presence of your fellow students, socializing and enjoying shared activities—gaming together on someone’s console rather than alone on your computer, or watching movies with friends on a communal bigscreen TV rather. And he points out that an older laptop will not be as attractive a target for theft, and if it is stolen you haven’t lost as much money.

He also points out that Ubuntu won’t catch the viruses of or be as susceptible to hackers as a Windows computer, and OpenOffice will create and read files in the Microsoft Word format that is standard for Windows making it compatible with the rest of the campus. (In my day job, I’ve recommended OpenOffice a number of times to people who were upset to learn their computer only came with a trial version of Microsoft Windows.) And though Merrill doesn’t mention it, the FBReader e-book app runs just fine on Ubuntu on older hardware, too.

The College Student Attention Span

There is a lot to what Merrill says. There is often an obsession with the newest and niftiest gadgets in education, perhaps not least of all because the people who will be using them are exactly in the demographic comprised of the most excited users of any new and nifty technology. It’s no accident that the college computer nerd/inventor is a cliché that has featured in movies from Real Genius to Social Network.

But I speak from experience when I say that college kids are also among the most easily distracted by new and nifty tech toys. I know when I was a college student and allowed to use computers in the classroom, I spent as much or more time browsing Slashdot and my e-mail and chatting online with friends as I did on classwork. (Alas, if I had been less distracted and paid more attention, I might have kept more of my grants and full ride scholarships and not have ended up with over $50,000 in student loan debts to pay off.)

With that in mind, perhaps making do with an older, not as capable computer could be good for the educational experience of college students who do it. If they can’t be distracted by the newest and neatest computer games, they might be able to pay more attention to their coursework. (In theory, anyway. In actual fact, I have little doubt that some people could find endless distraction in nothing more than a pocket calculator, or maybe an abacus.)

The Laptop and the Student Budget

On the other hand, if money is an issue, it is really amazing how laptop prices have fallen over the last few years. I’m not sure if it came about as a result of the OLPC’s quest to drive prices down on its XO netbook, and Intel’s similar drive for its Classmate, but it seems as if laptops in general have become considerably more affordable than they used to be.

The MSI A5000-40US laptop I got for Christmas last year cost about $350—less money than the iPod Touch 64GB I’m currently lusting after. It’s not going to run the newest and fanciest games at full graphical and speed capabilities, but it is terrific for browsing the web, writing, and watching video. Tiger Direct currently lists a number of 15” laptops starting at $299.99, and smaller netbooks starting for even less.

And of course Geeks.com has refurbished netbooks from a couple years back at relatively low prices (currently starting at $199.99 for anything that’s not Windows CE, but they get lower-priced ones in every so often). It would be entirely possible for today’s college student to buy a new but low-end laptop for little more than the cost of a particularly expensive textbook or two. It would be hard to beat those prices and still get anything worthwhile by going to Craigslist as Merrill suggests.

Cheap laptops and netbooks are great educational devices—possibly even better than an iPad, given that the physical keyboard and full desktop software capabilities make it easier for students to do useful things and don’t offer all the timewasting distractions that can be found on the iPad. And college students don’t necessarily need the latest and greatest technology for the tasks that college demands of them (with a few exceptions, such as students in particular technology degree tracks).

And since e-books are mainly text and pictures, practically any computer a student gets will read them with ease.

Up until last Christmas, I made do with an aging Toshiba Satellite laptop running Ubuntu. It had no working battery, so I had to make do with plugging it in wherever I went. But all the same, it let me write and surf the net, and I have little doubt that I would have been able to use it to complete most of the writing assignments I was given in college if I’d had it with me at the time.

Perhaps the emphasis on college students having the latest and greatest technology should be reconsidered, at least from the perspective of giving them them the best ability to focus on the important thing—their education.

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:

If government wanted to do something like this, why involve India’s top engineering colleges’ name in the whole thing. Why destroy their reputation. Government is just buying a tablet, which I am sure nobody else is buying, in bulk on a cheap rate and then subsidizing it to sell it for $35.

There are many questions now, which Indian government needs to answer. I hope to hear the truth from them in the coming days.

I’ll agree with Androidos: this certainly does raise some questions about what the government thought it was doing. On the other hand, if true it would hardly be the first time the Indian government has made sweeping statements relating to cheap computer tech that turned out not to have much substance behind them.

Back in 2007, in reaction to the $100 OLPC XO-1 project (which they felt still cost too much), an Indian government ministry announced plans to make a laptop for the unbelievable price of $10 (though total costs were estimated at $47 at that point). In 2008, it was announced that it would start at $100, instead. In January 2009, they announced that it would definitely be $10 again (though at that point it was costing them $20)…then in April, 2009, India ordered 250,000 of those “too expensive” XO-1s instead.

TeleRead previously mentioned HiVision back in 2008, when the company produced the first batch of the cheap Chinese netbooks that are now ubiquitous enough to have made their way into Kmart.

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 people in that situation in my tech support day job), and the clunkiness of the form factor means it may not be optimal for e-reading either (though it is possible to adapt).

That hasn’t stopped me from wanting one, and vacillating over whether to blow $150 on one of the slightly outdated Linux Eee refurbs on Geeks.com. But when I take a serious look, I have to admit that the shiny toy factor is not a compelling enough reason to invest given that I have a perfectly serviceable laptop and iPad already.

On Wired’s Gadget Lab, Tim Carmody presents an opposing view. If netbooks are losing a little luster, he suggests that it’s more in the nature of a correction from overinflated expectations. It was a touch unrealistic to expect that the netbook would be the only small-and-light form factor device to appeal.

If, as Forrester Research predicts, netbooks’ market share will dwindle to 17% of the total PC market, that is still a respectable number—better than 1 in every 6 PCs will be a netbook, and that’s only 1% behind desktops’ projected 18% share.

Carmody links to blogger Joanne McNeil’s post explaining why she bought a netbook instead of an iPad. She notes that the smaller device is “a pain in many ways” but also works very well for her in others—the small keyboard is better sized to her feminine fingers than her Macbook’s larger keyboard, for instance.

It seems likely that netbooks will continue to have respectable sales into the foreseeable future, as they fit an ecological niche (small, but with physical keyboard attached and able to run desktop PC software) that no other device does. With that in mind, the CNet post may just be yet another example of the “death of…” articles we’ve been seeing so much of lately: interesting at first, but ultimately speculation without a lot of point.

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 a bootable USB drive for experimentation.

ReadWriteWeb also links to a blog post by Lee Mathews of the Download Squad with some additional tips and advice for Vanilla experimenters. Among other things, Mathews notes:

Not all hardware is going to work. The Chromium x86-generic images don’t include a ton of drivers, so you may be missing one fairly important piece of the puzzle: wifi support. Most netbooks will work 100% — full-sized laptops are more iffy.

On a related note, Computerworld reports that the newest beta of Chrome 6 includes menus that have been optimized for touch operation, possibly hinting at the new tablets that are supposedly on the way.

Has anyone tried this OS out yet? What do you think? How is it going to work as a netbook or tablet OS, and might it also make a good e-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 about $50 more from Geeks.com—a couple of years old, but still capable of doing a lot more than a WinCE not-so-smartbook. (Or, for that matter, you can get some refurbished Augen Windows CE devices for $95 from Geeks right now—if you feel like throwing your money away.)

The LookBook will have a hardware keyboard, 512 megs of storage, an 8-gig SD card slot, and access to the Kobo e-book store. Physically, it looks very similar to the $100 e-book reader that Kmart was offering. It’s a little hard to see how they expect to sell very many of those, given that the e-ink Kobo or wifi Kindle are considerably cheaper, and (arguably) easier on the eyes.

Still, I suppose you could say that the devices showing up in discount stores like Kmart and CVS is a sign that the devices have finally “made it”. After all, these stores wouldn’t stock the devices if they didn’t think they’d appeal to their clientele.

(Found via our sister blog, Gadgetell.)

Now Engadget reports that Augen has issued a press release stating the apps were installed on the devices for “testing purposes” during development, and were accidentally left in the production version of the operating system.

Augen says that it and Google have come to an understanding that, though it can’t do anything about the products that have already shipped, it will remove the controversial apps from future production runs of its products and it is working on getting the proper licensing to put them back in.

Not that these devices are any great shakes as hardware when it comes right down to it. For about the same amount of money, you can get a 2 to 3 year old refurbished Asus Eee, which will probably be significantly faster and more capable.

When I saw this story, I had to glance at my new wristwatch, which helpfully provides a display for the year as well as month and day, to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally slipped one or two years back in time. (The watch synchronizes by radio with the atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colorado, so I can know for certain that it’s still 2010—the atoms say so!) It’s been at least that long since anyone seriously tried to list an e-reader of that size at that price range.

The 9.7” Kindle DX is $379. The 9.7” color iPad starts at $499. That kind of overpricing is what has presumably killed the Plastic Logic Que, which was supposed to cost $649 for a slightly larger e-paper screen. Meanwhile, the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony are priced between $100 and $300 depending on model, and mostly between $100 and $200, for 5” or 6” screens. And as the Digitimes story points out, Asus doesn’t have any content distribution deals in place the way Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Border, and Apple have.

Of course, the article only said that the e-reader would be “under $599”. It didn’t say how far “under” it would be. In most commercial cases, “under $599” generally means “exactly $598.99”, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. After all, you could also truthfully say that the iPad costs “under $19,999”, because it certainly does (unless, of course, it’s this one).

Is Asus trying to pull a “Scotty,” perhaps? (“Aye, captain, I said it would cost $599, but I tried really hard and managed to bring it in for $249.” “You’re a miracle-worker, Scotty.”) Or do like Apple did by “leaking” an $800-$1000 price range for the iPad and then bringing it in at $499 to $829?

If so, they’re being a little clumsy about it. If you’re going to set the expectation with a high price, you should at least make it a realistic one. For $599, I could get two fully-loaded, relatively recent Asus Eee netbooks, which might not be quite as good at e-reading as a dedicated e-ink reader but would certainly do a lot of other things better.

On the other hand, the article does mention they’re looking at offering “bundle sales” through mobile telecom carriers. Perhaps they’re thinking of offering it at a reduced price with a contract? The iPhone does cost $799 without a contract, after all. Even so, it’s hard to imagine any consumer wanting to tie himself to a contract for an unknown e-book reader when he could get a more popular one with no contract (and indeed free 3G connectivity) for the same amount.

When I spoke to the electronics department anyway, the electronics associate said they had gotten maybe two of them in the first day, then sold out of them. (The person I spoke to this time knew more about it than the last person I spoke to there.) However, they did have the $99 Augen e-book reader listed on Kmart.com (and pictured above).

And so did the second of the two Kmarts, though as far as that rep knew they had never gotten any of the $149 tablet in (but were issuing rain checks). He didn’t think they’d sold many of the e-book readers—as the rep said, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing people in that part of town are interested in. The rep at the third store seemed the least knowledgeable of any of them, and reported not finding any Augen devices at all.

As Paul’s post suggests, none of these devices is likely to be anything to write home about. Still, it is interesting indeed that cheap Android devices have penetrated as far as Kmart, and that there is evidently such a huge interest in them that at least one customer service rep has started responding preemptively to electronics department requests. (Though I suppose she might just remember my voice from last time I called, but I didn’t think it was the same person.)