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As I read through the comments I see a lot of interest and debate about hardware -- screen readability, battery life, size and weight -- and to a lessor extent e-book file formats and publishing. These are important, and they miss essential points.

1. An e-book reader treats the student as a passive consumer. This is a model we have become all too familiar with, conditioned by being raised on a diet of printed books, movies and television. It fails because so much more is possible. A computer offers the opportunity for interactive learning, starting with social media and going straight into software development. Slashdot readers should known this. A key component is an on-going relationship with teachers, with interaction taking place entirely on-line, or as an enhancement to "brick and mortar" classroom activity.

2. The information contained in textbooks does not need to be published for profit. It is time for the textbook industry to follow the telegraph industry into the halls of our museums. Better still, to be reduced to a Wikipedia page. MIT has shown the way with their OpenCourseWare. Slashdot readers appreciate the value of free software. It should be obvious the same thing applies to textbooks.

3. It is not enough to fill a classroom with iMacs, or to offer an e-book reader in place of printed textbooks. What is needed is a larger infrastructure, something like a physical school and something akin to the Internet, the place where education takes place.

If you are interested in contributing to the development of such a place, come and join the Open Slate Project.

The last thing I want my students doing is mindlessly copying stuff - I want them engaging their brains and thinking about the content which is something that is not easy to achieve! In addition to the use of clickers and questions in the lecture, to relieve the writing part I make the OpenOffice (no PowerPoint!) slides available on the website along with a video podcast of the lecture audio and the computer screen. This lets students listen again to any part they found hard to understand... or to catch up if they "accidentally" miss a lecture!

Unfortunately slides are only part of the issue and I do a good bit of writing on the whiteboard as well (derivations, answers to student questions which need diagrams etc.). So far I have found no easy way to capture this - I know that there are solutions but the ones I have found are not portable and since I lecture in different rooms from term-to-term they are not viable.

This sounds like a job for Super Chalk Board. Seriously, I need to update some of the relevent material; much of what I have on the web site (Chalk Dust see in particular "Delivery") is out of date. Interested?

The goal of the Open Slate Project is to develope an open-source Kindle-like, Newton-like slate computer, and, to go with it, Chalk Dust educational software and courseware. Chalk Dust is intended to replace textbooks beginning at the high school level (9th - 12th grade), then expand to include college and primary school.

The goal of the Open Slate Project is to develope an open-source Kindle-like, Newton-like slate computer, and, to go with it, Chalk Dust educational software and courseware. Chalk Dust is intended to replace textbooks beginning at the high school level (9th - 12th grade), then expand to include college and primary school.

Kinda reminds me of my very own Open Slate. Only my concept calls for a full-featured mobile computer that can do a lot of useful work without a network connection. Think e-book / web browser / PC in a pen-based package. As for the price, students build their own so cost is cost, unless a student chooses to pay a more advanced student to make them a custom unit. The design, construction, and maintenece of slates would be core subjects in fields like art, industrial art, and science. Every slate would be a personal creative statement, a subject of study, and a tool for learning.

The CrunchPad is a good looking device and may have technology I am still looking for. I think such a device has huge potential as a PDA/entertainment center. What I want are the learning experiences that this build team had, for all students. Student built robots and soloar powered cars are other good examples. A finished, off-the-shelf, consumer product will not provide that experience.

If you want to see an old style yet tasteful web page, visit my vintage 2000 Open Slate Project site. It features a "3D" background, another fad that faded. No Flash. I do need to spend more time updating that site.

Your scepticism is well founded. I have been running a more expansive project, called Open Slate, for over five years, and have never gotten much interest. My project has a textbook piece called Chalk Dust. From its inception I did not think it would look or act quite like Wikipedia, but to help jump start the program I set up a wikimedia site. Nothing happening there. Last year I gave up on the public school system and turned to homeschoolers. Nothing there yet, either, in spite of my offer to teach a class for free. The big problem appears to be the hope, on the part of subject matter experts, that they will make money writing textbooks.

Your scepticism is well founded. I have been running a more expansive project, called Open Slate, for over five years, and have never gotten much interest. My project has a textbook piece called Chalk Dust. From its inception I did not think it would look or act quite like Wikipedia, but to help jump start the program I set up a wikimedia site. Nothing happening there. Last year I gave up on the public school system and turned to homeschoolers. Nothing there yet, either, in spite of my offer to teach a class for free. The big problem appears to be the hope, on the part of subject matter experts, that they will make money writing textbooks.

Anyone interested in contributing to open-source textbooks should visit the Open Slate Project. The textbook piece has a wiki up and is looking for submissions. The reason why open-source textbooks have not been a success is the difficulty in accessing them. The Open Slate Project intends to solve the problem of bringing IT into the classroom, not as a subject for study so much as a tool for learning through communication.

Anyone interested in contributing to open-source textbooks should visit the Open Slate Project. The textbook piece has a wiki up and is looking for submissions. The reason why open-source textbooks have not been a success is the difficulty in accessing them. The Open Slate Project intends to solve the problem of bringing IT into the classroom, not as a subject for study so much as a tool for learning through communication.

The good news is that OLPC is not the only possible platform, and we can keep working on this without them. The bad news is that OLPC has the mind-share, and that's going to be hard to fight, especially with Microsoft behind them.

A couple of things. First, I invite anyone who has become disenchanted with OLPC to join us at the Open Slate Project. Our view of the computer, software, and textbooks is slightly different than what Bruce described, especially in that Chalk Dust, the courseware portion, is not intended to be implemented with E-books.

To be honest, Open Slate is not as far along as OLPC, but we have been making progress. Our audience is not poor, third-world kids as much as everyday kids in brick-and-mortar schools as well as homeschoolers.

The resistance I have encountered with regards to Chalk Dust replacing commercial textbooks has so far come from potential authors. A successful book is a welcome supplement to a university professor's pay. To a lesser extent, so are payments for reviews of journal submissions. But I believe our greatest challenge to overcome is apathy ... professors admit they select books for class without knowing what the cost. It is to our advantage that the high cost of textbooks recently became headline news.

Really? tbh, I havent researched this much, but its smooth sailing on my thinkpad T23. Sure its an older notebook, so the drivers have had longer to stabilize, but I get all my power management junk. -It properly drops the processor into sleep modes (confirmed by powertop) -It parks the HDD after a set time -It suspends/sleeps/resumes fine, including bringing wifi back -I get 3 hours out of it, which is exactly what the specs say I should get. So I'm not so sure the situation is as abysmal as you suggest.

Two things:

1. You did not mention CPU speed throttling. With newer, faster CPUs this is vital to long battery life. I run FreeBSD 7.0 on a Dell Latitude D830, with dual core CPU. The OS sees and uses both CPUs automatically, but CPU speed control is, so far, strictly manual. Gnome has a panel thingy called "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor" that I can use to set the speed as low was 800MHz with little apparent affect. What I want is for this to be automatic, with the CPU barely ticking over when there is nothing to do.

2. The success of ACPI is dependent on the BIOS. In turn, BIOS suppliers tend to make ACPI code which works with Windows without consideration for the standard, and Microsoft does not follow the standard. ACPI as implemented on Linux and the BSDs begins at strict conformance. The fiddle mentioned in another post is the process of getting a broken BIOS working with a "correct" ACPI implementation. Since every manufacturer comes up with their own version, there is some variety in what is broken.

Speaking of broken, on my D830 sleep mode works fine in Windows XP, but in FreeBSD it never wakes up. If I were to fiddle enough I might get it working, but I have other things to do.

More at FreeBSD Handbook ACPI Overview.