Monday, July 21, 2008

Better Than the $100 / EeePC/Classmate PC ?

Today, on the TechCrunch blog, the editor, Michael Arrington, based on a blog post on the Macrumors blog, proposed the creation of the device like the one above.  It would have a browser (Firefox) and Skype and a USB port.  There would be no keyboard, but there were several suggestions in the comments section, like an on screen keyboard like the iPhone, a small USB keyboard or handwriting recognition with a stylus. The unit would also have speakers and a web camera built in.   Arrington wants the retail price to be around $200 and the screen size would be approximately twice the size of the iPhone.

Something like this would be a educator's dream. You could reduce the cost of entry for all students and with the price of access to 3G networks dropping (future blog post) we could have ubuquitous for all students by 2010.  

The unit would have access to all of the things the students want and all of the things teachers want them to have access to.

What do you think?  Is it plausible?  Is it desirable? Only time will tell.

1 comment:

Kern Kelley said...

Desirable? Absolutely, but nothing that I think Apple couldn't accomplish if they wanted. The most interesting aspect for me is this idea that someone can make a call for a piece of hardware and readers will just contribute because they want a similar device - no money incentive. Something we take for granted with information now (Wikipedia) but to pull it off with something tangible would be quite a game changer I think.