[Edu-sig] Many Laptops per Adult

[gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada)]

If the idea is shared laptops, probably a single laptop configuration would suffice for the following reasons:
-- it's likely that most adults are barely competent to configure an operating systems
-- "administrators" need to be able to maintain the revolving door laptops with minimal, consistent effort
-- hard disks tend to be of sufficient size to host multiple operating systems
-- someone grabbed the Ubuntu laptop but she/he needed the Windows laptop for________________ (fill in)
-- someone needed the Ubuntu laptop but it was unfortunately already checked out
-- individual's need to control their own data
-- more efficient would be a single laptop to update perhaps by dropping a new image of a virtual configuration set
-- a smaller pool of laptops would be required per "team" of shared users since all laptops would have a shared configuration

No matter what, some end-user training would be required to explain how to use whatever laptop
the adult was checking out ... therefore, with a SINGLE laptop, a SINGLE instruction
booklet would require one extra section explaining how to boot into one's required environment.

Shared data (e.g. a slide presentation) could reside in a common folder on each "team" laptop.

USB flash drives are relatively inexpensive, hence individuals would keep their unique files
on their own USB flash drive.




g.