Laptops are cheap. Why handhelds? Comment!
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 at 9:05PM 
The December Issue of PC World magazine contains the article Solid $500 Laptops. The magazine reviews three bargain laptops from major manufacturers. Although the laptops in the article are inexpensive, the average selling price for a laptop in August of this year was $1,100 (a few more times the cost of a single handheld). However, the average cost of laptops has been declining rapidly. In fact, because of low prices, laptops now outsell desktops! PC World notes that prices will continue to drop:
The cheapest notebooks could sink to the $400 range by the end of this year and may even drop as low as $300 by late 2006, according to various computer vendors, chip experts, and PC industry observers. In fact, as we went to press CompUSA was selling a Compaq laptop for $425 after $300 in various rebates.So my question for you is: Why buy handhelds for students when you can get a laptop for close to the same price? Please click the orange link below that reads Wednesday, November 02, 2005. Let's outline reasons why handheld computers are appropriate for education, knowing laptops are now on the cheap."It used to be notebooks would sell for close to $600 only as a stunt," says Mark Margevicius, an analyst with Gartner Research. But now some laptops have sold for that price consistently, he says.
There are hundreds of us who read this blog regularly, so even if you've never left a comment before, let's have as many blog readers as possible join the discussion through commenting! You can even leave comments anonymously. And who knows, perhaps we'll read your comment on a future Soft Reset podcast!
Reader Comments (8)
Handhelds require less space to store, have fewer maintenance issues, and there are 100's or even 1000's of free software applications.
The question should have been turned the other way round: why buy laptops for students when you can get a handheld for close to nothing (Z22 ~ $99).
Pros:
* Handhelds are cheap - you can easily have one per student.
* Handhelds do not take up much space.
* Lots of (cheap) applications.
* Handhelds can easily be carried around - no need to take any special precautions.
* Software is easy to install and maintain - if you need to replace a handheld you just hotsync the necessary software across (no or limited installation time).
* .. oh, and handhelds are cool!
Cons:
* Handhelds are personal. It is hard to team up students behind a handheld - laptops scores a point here!
* Handhelds have limited screen size so applications tend to be "basic" - laptops have larger screens so more info can be presented.
* Handhelds (if not "over-equipped" with a keyboard) comes with difficult text-entry.
* Limited multimedia support on low end devices.
Ah well, just my ramblings ...
I cannot even begin to imagine the sound of a laptop crashing to the floor of my 4th grade classroom. But I can imagine the silence that would follow! My kids have had a few accidents with their handhelds, and so have I, but I feel the damage to a dropped laptop would be much more severe, just the basic physics. I also cannot visualize my students carrying their laptops to the creek, the zoo, etc. like we do our handhelds and AlphaSmarts.
Elaine Waters
Eastfield Elementary
Marion, NC
The most inviting thing about handhelds is the ability to beam. Even with wireless access to the internet and email, a laptop is slower in the sharing of information than a trusty handheld. It also requires different backdrops to email word attachments or photos, then process them on the computer; whereas the handheld shares most information directly to the software that uses it. For elementary students, this is important. The pre-filed nature of received information is a big time-saver and also gets kids right back into the work they were doing, rather than leading them into a teachable moment about the particulars of saving different types of information in retreivable locations on a laptop. Put simply, when I've used computers with fifth graders, the biggest time-eater and frustrator is saving. Handheld use virtually (no pun intended) eliminates the finer points of saving and gives kids confidence that their work will be easily accessible each time they go back to it.
The ability to back up everything on a handheld is also very alluring. A laptop user who went home and came back with a crashed hard drive would have no recourse but to start over on all the operational programs, not to mention any work that had not been saved in an alternative way. A handheld user who finds his handheld destroyed completely is only a couple of hundred dollars and two minutes away from complete recovery of all drivers, data, and settings. (No money at all if a loaner handheld can be found!) Much of the work done in our classroom with handhelds is text-oriented. Large documents, sets of notes, and lists of tasks can be retrieved from the computer that the handheld user hotsynchs to, even without purchasing or renaming a new handheld. The security, cuteness, beam-ability, and portability of handhelds make me fonder of them than of laptops for elementary classroom use.
I think it is important to note that navigation of menus and other technical movement from point A to point B is as easily learned on the handheld as it is on the double-dollar laptop.
On the other hand, remember that a pc or laptop of some kind needs to be available to support the hotsynch process for handheld users. Handhelds do not stand alone. They are like so many tentacles leading back to the "brain," which in our classroom is...you guessed it...a laptop!
Where to start? Well, the OS on the Palm handhelds is very simple-- you really don't need much tech support to handle 30 Palm handhelds, but if you had 30 laptops (anyone ever maintained a computer lab??) it would be very time consuming. Can you imagine trying to keep up the virus detection software and Microsoft updates with 30 laptops that GO HOME?
I really doubt those $400 laptops have microsoft office.
Storage, space, battery life--- and how much would you have to budget for software for those laptops?
There's so much of a difference between a PDA and a laptop. They both serve different purposes. The PDA is much more portable, allowing you to carry it everywhere discretely while still providing you with the ability to store a lot of information and do a lot of tasks that the laptop can do. But it's not a laptop.
A laptop on the other hand is meant for doing a lot of processing and resource intensive tasks that the PDA can't handle. But, it uses a lot more battery, resources, and even a small lightweight subnotebook isn't by any means able to fit in a pocket. Carrying a laptop everywhere isn't a good idea. It's similar to the big banner sign saying "Steal me".
So, for me, you can't equate a laptop to a PDA. They both serve different purposes. You can't have great battery life, processing power and yet still be small, and fit in your shirt pocket. It's not possible.
http://maceyr.blogspot.com" REL="nofollow">maceyr's Palm blog for newbies and new converts
The after Thansgiving sale at Walmart will have laptops for around $300. That's less than some of the Palm's and PPC's.
I love my handheld, but $300? That's hard to beat. It is only a matter of time before the more mainstream computer outlets will be selling them at that price. If so, the bottom might fall out of the handheld market. I understand the draw of the handheld, as far as size, but 300 bucks? That's darned-near makes them disposable!
http://SpecialEducator.us
Wouldn't the real issue here be connectivity? While the ability to connect with those in the class may be greater given, until the Palm provides the same web experience as the laptop, I can't imagine why, if price isn't a factor you would choose a handheld over a laptop. In addition, the ability to produce full featured multimedia would also be a major consideration.
If the $100 MIT laptop project finds true success, the handheld may be a dying product. The handheld market appears to be focussing on the convergence of phone, computer and organizer.
Then again, if that's true, you may be able to purchase a handheld for $25, and once again it becomes an attractive solution.