<html><head></head><body>I second Anish on the matters of total cost, not depending on tablets and using used laptops instead. I've also had success running Linux Mint on used T400s in a museum setting with kids. Worked out very well. - Mariah<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On November 11, 2015 9:36:30 PM EST, Anish Mangal <anishmg@umich.edu> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>It is interesting to follow this discussion. I think it was in .uy where they said that while the laptops cost $200, TCO was ~$600, i.e. a bulk of the money was spent on infrastructure, teacher training, community, repairs etc. - so if you plan to do this *properly* then the upfront cost of the tablet is not <i>that</i> big of a factor, considering other expenses involved. However, it is very enticing to someone just starting out with new deployment to think in terms of upfront hardware costs - hence this thread. <br /><br /></div>I am personally against promoting tablets for education, but that matters little when a school administrator or teacher asks for them - you just make your case but do as they say :-) <br /><br /></div>Lastly, I see huge value in used laptops. A thinkpad (T400) machine with 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM, a dual core processor and a 14 inch screen is available for <$130. I recently set up a small number of them running Linux Mint
(because it is very cough-window-cough like) and a full offline mirror of ubuntu and mint repositories - which provides some ~80,000 software packages. These laptops are also easily repairable, and hence help promote repair culture. <br /><br /></div>Cheers,<br /></div>Anish<br /><br /><div><div><div><br /></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br /><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 3:12 AM, Alan Claver <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:alc@psu.edu" target="_blank">alc@psu.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br /><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class=""><br />
> On Nov 11, 2015, at 3:07 PM, Braddock Gaskill <<a href="mailto:braddock@gmail.com">braddock@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br />
><br />
> I would be very weary of relying on the root'ing of an Amazon Tablet. They have been rootable in the past, then automatic upgrades break the rootability, then someone figures out a clever hack, and then it is defeated again by Amazon. You are not going to know month-to-month if you can buy more to deploy.<br />
<br />
</span>Does a “hardened” device still have value in the communities we service. I think that’s an important question that needs discussion. No consumer device is going to meet the definition of hardened (or repairable).<br />
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<p style="margin-top: 2.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; border-bottom: 1px solid #000"></p><pre class="k9mail"><hr /><br />IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br />IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org<br /><a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>