Suhit Anantula's Library tagged technovus →  View Popular

However, the issue is not so much with the hardware, which is derived from that of notebook computers, but the business model. Zonbu and similar units assume that consumers will be willing to pay an ongoing fee for online storage and applications, much as they pay by the month to use a mobile phone. However, consumers who already have computers are not used to having to keep paying for them. Like cars, PCs give the illusion that once you buy it you can drive for free, forgetting the cost of fuel, registration, tools, insurance and taxes, or in the case of PCs the cost of software upgrades and maintenance.

It will be interesting to see how TechNovus do convincing Australian consumers that low power, low cost network computers make sense here.

This post was written in November 2006, so these numbers are a little out of date. It’s now been 12 months and we’ve saved almost exactly $1M. You can see the most recent numbers, as of April 2007, in my ETech slides.

I would say that the Computerworld figure of 8,000 sheets per student, per year, might be a bit high for a U.S. student, but not outrageously so. Anyway, if you go through the whole calculation in the Computerwold post, the costs for paper, toner and all the rest of the expensive items needed for paper-driven schools vastly eclipse what it would cost to buy each student a Linux notebook computer. (Asus Linux notebooks are very popular now, come loaded with open source applications and no software licensing fees, and can be had for under $350.)

In a previous post, I cited some data on how doable it might be to put a Linux netbook or notebook in the hand of every kid in school, paying for the effort by getting schools to go paperless--or near-paperless. With Linux-based netbooks such as the Asus Eee PCs dropping well below $400 for basic systems and stocked with lots of good open source software, every kid could have a personal computer. This post caught my eye because it cites some good software applications that could boost Linux in schools. Here's the upshot.

ADrive’s Re-Branding Solution provides organizations with complete customized, online storage and backup. We will work with you to develop this product according to your organization’s standards to meet your business requirements. From the interface of the website to the storage capacity each user at your company receives, you will have the ability to completely customize the entire system. Unlike most online storage companies, your users would not have to share storage space with other users. Your users would each have their own storage space under our Re-Branding Solution.

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