Netbooks - initial hardware housekeeping issues

I have been using Psion and Palm pocket computers extensively for some years to place computer assistance in the hands of primary pupils “doing science” outside the classroom. Given a trial set of “Classmate” Asus EEE PC subnotebooks (or “netbooks”) for a month, my first concern was not their capability (obviously greater, and to be dealt with in another post) but how far they could replace their smaller equivalents in the same rôle. The two crucial issues, with small children, are portability and survivability.

Portability is a relative term. Many of the boys to whom I loan a palmtop machine simply put it in their trouser pocket. Girls, on the other hand, usually put it in a school bag along with their books and so on. These Asus machines are about twice the size of a Psion, four times that of a Palm device. That makes them unpocketable, but doesn’t much affect a school bag. For boys, then, a change in behaviour is often necessary for these machines to be considered “portable”, but not for most girls.

For that reason, I loaned all five machines out to boys on 24 hour tickets in the first week just to see what would happen. In most cases, they went into sports bags (and came bag muddy) or satchels (and came back covered in grey fluff). In a significant minority (15%) of cases they were carried around continually in the hand, which places them at considerably greater risk (but see below on survivability).

After the first week they were loaned as required, regardless of gender or time span; as expected, the girls treated them exactly as if they were palmtops.

Survivability was more worrying, and I asked how much risk was acceptable in field trialling. The answer back from the sponsor was that deliberate attempts to test a machine to destruction would be unacceptable, but that we shouldn’t let potential hazard stop us from doing things we would do with a palmtop. It happened that a joint maths/sport project was under way, so the trial subnotebooks were added to the stock of Psions and Palms and allowed to go out onto football and netball pitches.

A football pitch provided the severest test of survivability. A pupil took one of the netbooks down to a practice game to try out both real time analysis of game descriptors entered into a spreadsheet (OpenOffice Calc, saving in Excel file format) and video capture to disk using the built in camera. The computer’s novelty attracted a lot of attention and it wasn’t long before attempts were made to take it away from its guardian, who resisted. In the resulting mêlée the computer was dropped, trampled on by several sets of studded boots and rolled over by half a dozen tussling nine year old boys. When order had been restored, the referee had to dig it out of the mud. Cleaning the mud out of USB ports, Ethernet socket, VGA output connector, sound jacks and, worst of all, the keyboard, took a lot of time, patience and cocktail sticks but, miraculously, everything was still in perfect working order. After that, we sealed all orifices with electrical insulating tape unless they were needed for use; proper sealing plugs would be better still, but would probably get lost fairly quickly.

Fast forward: despite horror stories like this, and my gut feeling that these machines are not ultimately as robust as handhelds, none came to grief in the time we had them.

My summary judgement: these are a valuable addition to the portable computing options available for primary science. Since Psion type machines are no longer made, and can only be replaced second hand, their gradual replacement on failure by these small subnotebooks seems a good strategy. At the same time, it would be a mistake to withdraw a working handheld (especially of the palm type). For as long as possible, keep existing palmtop hardware in use but expand enthusiastically with subnotebooks.

[Contributed by Chandra]