Arlo, Yeah, I tried to use many different kinds of PDA over the years including the Window's Mobile on my current cell phone. They have all been disappointing; just too small and too difficult to interact with. But this is different. It is a step back into simpler computing but it is always there. Always on. Always easy to get to and always usable.
Cost is a big factor too. There is the one laptop per child initiative that seeks to give every child a laptop. These are really scaled down versions of what I am using but similar in a lot of ways; reduced computing power in exchange for smaller size and convenient use. I believe when you buy one of the $200 one laptop per child boxes, they give one to a kid somewhere. Nice plan. I am a Geek as Dave says so a $100 or $200 machine would not do much for me but $400 is still cheap and includes most of the bells and whistles. I may at last learn to live without a mouse and finally master the touch pad. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks, Krimel [Krimel] ... with the invention of the Bluetooth headset, that talking to yourself in public was no longer a reliable sign of psychosis. [Arlo] The other day I was walking across campus and saw someone talking on (what I assumed was) a cellphone. He hand was up at his ear, in the same manner as one would expect a cell-phoner to be. When I got close, I noticed his hand was empty, and in his ear was a blue-tooth device. I actually stopped and asked him, why, if you have that headset, are you putting your hand to your ear. "Because I didn't want everyone to think I was some crazy guy", was his reply. This reminded me of an article I had read that looked at those gestures we make when we are walking down a hallway and realize we left something back where we were. You know them, you put your hands on your pocket, make a gee-whiz face, sometimes even smack your forehead, shrug your arms and then turn around. Funny thing is, we do this even if no one else is around, and when we KNOW already we forgot something. We do it, they found, because it would be a sign of psychosis in our culture to just abruptly change direction with no gesture to accompany it. Despite the Luddites in our midst, who are already likely cackling about "gal derned rock music" and how great movies where back in the good ol' days, the netbooks you mention are really set to significantly impact the way we think about education and how we conduct business. Their low cost (relative to a MacBook Pro, say) is another bridge that will allow many to cross the divide. I notice the rapid changes in the way my own extended family keeps in contact, going all the way back to simply landline phones and postal mail, to twitter, facebook, texting, and cell calls that make our interactions more frequent and really make distances feel not so great. My daughter, for example, shared the pictures from her prom in real time to my mother via her blackberry (my mother lives several hours away and was not able to make it up). Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.53/2156 - Release Date: 06/06/09 05:53:00 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
