Re:Re: Who designed this mess
Yeah, those $200 -$400 consumer specials would last a whole - What? - day maybe, if that, in the environments that these "windups" are destined to be used.
The current crop of ultra-low priced laptops also have ultra low quality and ultra low survivability to any misadventures of the "oops" kind. They also come bundled with an OS and other features not exactly conducive to a learning environment.
The thing is that the target is not just price here. Other considerations in the design are durability, longevity of design, ease of use, not being welded to proprietary anything, and flexibility. That last one includes the addition or subtraction of features as deemed necessary by those who are actually paying for the things.
So having more than one USB port is not such an issue if you begin thinking creatively and remember that one of the caveats is keeping costs and losable/breakable extras at a minimum.
Heres a thought for all you wannabe entrepreneurs and engineers out there - cheap power to run these things - can someone design $100 - $200 charger systems that could keep a classroom of these things running on a daily basis?
Hello? Anyone? thought so!