Classmate TabletPC

[Tami Brass]

Has anyone seen this yet? Classmate TabletPC From what I've been reading, it should be out early 2009. The screen supports touch and tablet input. The estimated cost is around $500.
Question: Can you see these in your school?

For more info, see this article from Laptop Mag.

[Karen Douse]

We are hoping to be able to use them in our middle school next year if they test well and we can arrange good warranty and service issues. The cost makes them hard to resist if they work well. I'd love to hear if anyone has seen them released yet.

[Tami Brass]

Karen,

Mine test models are with FedEx right now and should be here tomorrow. I read a pretty thorough review on Liliputing yesterday - http://www.liliputing.com/2009/02/ctl-2go-pc-convertible-tablet-rev... . Sounds like we'll want to install Tablet XP to take full advantage of the hardware. I'm hoping they'll meet our needs as well. We're working with a locally-based Intel partner. I think the warranty should bring them in under $650.

[Jim Heynderickx]

Hi, Tami

Did you ever receive your test unit?

Thanks!

[Tami Brass]

Sorry I didn't post sooner. I received two test units in January. We kept one with the Intel image (XP Home) and wiped one to load Tablet XP on it. Both tested well, but the Tablet XP image worked better for our needs as we weren't able to use the tablet tools from Microsoft or do text recognition in OneNote 2007 without it.

After our testing, we secured a set of 25 machines for classroom pilot. We rarely have classes over 18, so this meant we had a handful of machines for faculty testing/exploration and two for loaners should machines go down. We've had one teacher use them quite a bit in math classes (6th grade) using OneNote shared notebooks on the server. In using the shared notebooks, kids ink their daily class notes, practice, etc., and have gone to a number of interactive math sites. So far, very successful.

We're hoping to test the word processing (due to keyboard size) more this week and have a recommendation to purchase shortly.

[Tami Brass]

Quick FYI -
We've been using these w/6th & 7th grades since September - both 1:1. So far, so good. Icky issue - stylus gets stuck (pops out w/a little help from a paper clip). No other issues thus far.

[Demetri Orlando]

Thanks for tweeting the link to the ZD guy's review of the new Intel Classmate: