Nick: Exhibitors at this year’s campus technology conference in Boston dropped the pencil and paper in favor of tablet PCs, netbooks and full pledge laptops for use in education.
Paul: There’s two kinds of education, there’s K12 and then there’s higher end. The K12 tends to be a desire for smaller, less expensive notebooks, standard clam shell notebooks, mini notebooks, their gaining popularity or netbooks as they call them. Started about 350 dollars for up to about 600 dollars, the reason they like those is that they can deploy twice as many as they can in traditional notebook at half the price, and budgets are getting cut, they’re not gone, but they’re cut. So there’s a lot of popularity for notebooks in lower education. Higher education, they tend to be moving for the tablets. And the tablets because it allows them to do a little more advance type of things such as use the pen, in a tape presentation, write formulas, take notes, share information with other students, use the web cam, turn it around into Slate mode, so on and so forth. Fujitsu had on display a number of PCs including desktop replacement laptops, tablets and even its UM PC, the U series lifebook. Another company called Tablet Kiosk had branded PCs including ultra mobile or UM PCs as well as multiple models of Slate PCs. While Tablet Kiosk has their own name on the actual hardware, the PCs are manufactured in Taiwan and include Intel processors. A company representative wouldn’t speak on camera, but pointed us towards spec sheets. The EO UM PC A73-30D includes an Intel Atom Z530P processor at 1.6 gigahertz. It runs Windows Vista business, has a hard drive configuration from 80 gigs, includes wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, and most standard IO port options. It has a 7 inch screen and weighs just under a kilogram or about 2.2 pounds including one main battery. It will be available in the fourth quarter of this year, but pricing was not available. A more rugged tablet, the Gtax840XT was also on display, it has an Intel Steely A110 ULV processor, an 80 gig hard drive, 1 gig or RAM, GPS and wifi and complies to military standard 810F. It cost about 3100 US dollars. Dell was also exhibiting at the show, but was a bit more secretive. Behind closed doors in its whisper room, the company was showing new laptop that a rep said would launch later this year and have unique features. The company even had attendee sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering the room, and we weren’t allowed in. With computers taking center stage at the show, it begs the question whether the pencil and paper education will go away all together.
Paul: I don’t, and people like to write and people like to type and I think that depending on the situation, you know, you want to jut down a grocery list, you jut down the groceries. If you wanna write down what you need at home depot, you do that, if you gonna send an email, you don’t write it down, scan it in and then email to somebody you type, so, everything has a place. But I still think pen and paper which is the metaphor for Slates is gonna be around for a long time. I don’t think you’re gonna replace.
Nick: Next year’s campus technology conference will be held in Boston from July 19th to the 22nd. Reporting from Boston, I’m Nick Barber, IDG News Service.
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