[Edu-sig] Many Laptops per Adult

[gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada)]

Scott, regarding your vision problems, from your e-mail header, it looks like you're using
          the virus a.k.a. Windows (User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914)).
          Me too.  My bread and soy butter world is Gates based.

          Windows has options to help your text reading:
                 -- I prefer ZoomIt (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx)
                 -- under Programs, Accessories, Accessibility, you'll find the Magnifier applet.
                 -- with Internet Explorer you can change text size via the View Menu
                       (success here is sometimes suppressed by the individual web page's internal structure)
                 -- Firefox 3 has a Zoom Menu which behaves similar to ZoomIt with the Firefox window.

           Linux and other O/S's likely have tools akin to ZoomIt and Magnifier.
 
            (Fortunately for me, I'm very near sighted, so I just have to move things closer to my eyeballs.)

Sinister Scott, I too am left handed .... not a problem with most laptops.  Sucks for hammers, though.     B-)
 
Scott, I did not say to avoid customization ~~ remember, however, we are talking SHARED laptops here.
         When I wrote "probably a single laptop configuration would suffice", I'm talking some form
         of multi-boot or equivalent.  Because today's hard disks are relatively large, it's possible to
         easily configure a single laptop to run more than a few operating systems.

--
As for your former colleague's colour-blindness, while likely not fixable, those with a basic understanding
of accessiblity issues will design for issues like blindness, colour blindness, hearing loss, et cetera.
Of course, not every disability will be easily supported.  Those will advanced forms of paralysis will
be disadvantaged in our current world as will fully blind persons.

CUSTOMIZATION  POSSIBILITIES
===========================
Not only can a USB flash drive have one's private data, it could also store individual profiles
and other methods of customization.  See also kirby's response.


regards ~~ gerry