Jim Forbes (founding producer of DemoMobile) and Tablet user has a couple great posts.
Here he talks about his recent experiences helping a friend try to purchase a Tablet PC for his college-bound daughter. It was a little rough going, however, eventually there was a happy ending. They purchased a Fujitsu Tablet at Frys Electronics. I’m so glad this had a happy ending.
And for those interested in computers and the classroom, you may want to check out his post here. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what an “education computer” might/should be like. (I’m thinking in terms of elementary students for now.) Of course, I’d add pen and touch technologies. That’s a given. But what about the networking? Should communication be more group focused than “Internet” minded? What I mean is that shouldn’t local ad-hoc networks of devices be more important to the “group” or classroom than “external” access to let’s say Google? There’s a time and a place for searching and communicating with information and people outside of your immediate area, however, during a learning session, doesn’t it seem like local networking is the most important? The thing is that that’s not the way our networks are set up. Networking comes from the mindset that computers are tethered together and that everyone is connected to everyone else. That’s not quite what you want here. Seems to me, that classroom networking is one of the next areas that needs improvements. I’m not sure though, if there are very many industry forces that will help this evolution. Education software vendors are probably going to have to solve this themselves and then nudge the OS folks to make accomodations to them.
[Links found via Dave Winer]