School Netbooks Dell Latitude 2100 Atom N270/N470

[hftvhftv]

My school district bought probably a thousand Dell Latitude 2100 netbooks in 2010, they believe that if you were to break one, you would have to pay a fee of $500 dollars for replacement, yet all of them are crippled single core atoms with 2gb of RAM, and slow 5400rpm drives. Has anyone else had experiences with these laptops or something similar?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, they are old, small, slow netbooks.
But that "$500" is not just direct replacement, but also procurement, maintenance, and an incentive to NOT break it.

 

[hftvhftv]

Alright but since they would not buy a new netbook since the program was removed during deployment because of a change in government that fee would simply be a charge. Besides they suck up time because we don't even have chrome only the already poor Internet Explorer 9. Makes me wish we had Linux since then these machines would be manageable.

 

[USAFRet]

Well, OK. Do you currently have one? Did you and your parents have to sign an agreement for this $500 penalty?
If so, don't break it or lose it.

It's a 5 year old, small, slow netbook. It will be old, small, and slow, no matter what OS is on it.
And mandating Linux would mean a whole lot of development for the application stack. It's not just the OS.

Many, many school districts have gone down this route. And seen zero education benefits. But it looked good at first.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

I dont have a Dell Netbook, its a different brand MSI (with 10" screen), it came with 1GB of RAM and XP
I added an extra 1GB of ram for a slight speedup and a high capacity battery so it lasted longer

You could speed it up a bit more with a SSD.
Not a large one or the fastest available.

This would make loading Windows & programs faster and allow it to be used while on the move without fear of braking the hard drive.

Most Windows netbooks are crippled to have a maximum of 2GB of ram so that can't be increased

I have seen laptops with Vista and 1GB of ram which are probably no faster than the Atom powered netbook with 2GB of RAM

regards
Mike Barnes

 

[hftvhftv]

Hi

I dont have a Dell Netbook, its a different brand MSI (with 10" screen), it came with 1GB of RAM and XP
I added an extra 1GB of ram for a slight speedup and a high capacity battery so it lasted longer

You could speed it up a bit more with a SSD.
Not a large one or the fastest available.

This would make loading Windows & programs faster and allow it to be used while on the move without fear of braking the hard drive.

Most Windows netbooks are crippled to have a maximum of 2GB of ram so that can't be increased

I have seen laptops with Vista and 1GB of ram which are probably no faster than the Atom powered netbook with 2GB of RAM

regards
Mike Barnes

Are these dual core Atoms or single Hyperthreaded?