We run a 1:1 program (I actually hate that term - we really run a learning program) at our school. So I've been watching the development of the netbook closely, as no doubt have a number of our parents.
I have a Dell Latitude E4300 (same as this year's student intake) and an HP Mini 2140 with 2 GB Ram and 160 GB hard drive. At a superficial level they have similar specs, and to be honest until last night at the basic stuff I was pretty happy with the performance of the HP Mini. Apart from the 576 pixels vertically, I could cope. Google Earth kind of runs, browsing is fine.
But last night I had the occasion to upload 7 x 3 minute videos from my Flip Ultra to Voicethread. And here was my first real negative. 49 minutes to prepare the files for uploading on the HP Mini, 11 minutes on the Latitude E4300. So, for me, while this is not necessarily a show stopper, it certainly supports the notion that a Netbook may have a significant achilles heel in our environment. My next test will need to look at video editting on the two - just some simple stuff, but our students do a lot of this stuff, so we need to know!
By the way, Flip cameras are awesome, I've had an Ultra for 8 months now - love it!
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