In 2007 computers in a new, smaller size at a lower price level were introduced, NETBOOKS. These netbooks are a side effect of the OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, project. But since their introduction more than 10 million have been sold and some people are projecting that 50 million will be shipped in 2010. This growth is having rather schizophrenic effects on the computer industry because the global economic decline is hurting sales and yet these machines are being scooped up at $300 to $500. Undoubtedly some people are buying these instead of more expensive machines to save money but others wouldn't buy anything if they couldn't get these and some individuals want them for their small size even though they can afford more.
But a famous founder of the PC industry said this recently:
"I can't wait!" says Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the Apple II. "The repeal of Moore's Law would create a renaissance for software development," he claims. "Only then will we finally be able to create software that will run on a stable and enduring platform."
"In schools," says Woz, "the life span of a desk is 25 years, a textbook is 10 years, and a computer is three years, tops. Which of these devices costs the most to buy and operate? Why, the PC, of course. Which has residual value when its useful life is over? Not the PC--it costs money to dispose of. At least books can be burned for heat. Until technology slows down enough for computing platforms to last long enough to be economically viable, they won't be truly intrinsic to education. So the end of Moore's Law, while it may look bad, would actually be very good."
Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years. That is the major reason computers have steadily gotten cheaper and more powerful for the last 30 years. How can anyone object to that? But those hardware changes required and encouraged software changes. As the possible variations in hardware multiply changes in software grow exponentially and that has resulted in innumerable incompatibilities and maintenance problems.
Plenty of people are saying that netbooks are a bad idea for various reasons. The screens are too small! The keyboards are too small! There is not enough processing power! Those are the BIG THREE Complaints. But those complainers rarely mention a certain downside of bigger laptops. There is no question that a $2,000 laptop will be much more powerful and have a bigger screen and keyboard, but who talks about how much a laptop that expensive will be worth in three years? If it is only worth $500 after three years then the buyer loses enough value to pay for 3 or 4 netbooks. It also means lugging around a HEAVIER machine for three years. So the question must be asked, "Is it worth it?"
Since only the users know what they will actually do with the machines there is no "one size fits all" answer to that question. But does it really make sense to compare netbooks to state of the art machines that cost 3 to 6 times as much? The difference that really matters between a $300 netbook and a $600 notebook may just come down to size, weight and battery endurance. A smaller less powerful machine means more hours of operation and lighter, less expensive batteries. Some people have small hands or may not type a great deal.
Grade school kids have little hands and probably can't type very fast anyway. What can netbooks do for them?The last complaint about the netbooks is the processing power. I recently got the opportunity to test two netbooks, an Asus and a Lenovo with a benchmark program from 1983. It is a prime numbers program called the Sieve of Eratosthanese. It was run on many different computers and the results were compiled and published by BYTE magazine that January. The fastest computer was an IBM 3033 mainframe which cost $3,000,000. The Lenovo and Asus netbooks with Intel Atom processors gave identical results, more than THREE TIMES AS FAST as that old expensive mainframe. So how much processing power is enough to do what these days? If BIG businesses were willing to shell out $3,000,000 in 1978 for one third of a netbook's processing power how can the netbooks not be sufficient for most purposes.
How powerful were the desktop computers in 1999? Were those machines unusable? These netbooks have about the same power as those desktops. Is the real problem that software is getting too big, bloated and inefficient? Do we really need animated characters to search our hard drives for data? Do we need graphics of paper flying across the screen every time we do a copy? Once those "features" are built into the operating system they take up disk space even if they are turned off. What can grade school kids do with 160 gigabytes of disk space besides fill it with videos? But is that why people bought desktops in 1999?
Businesses began using computers in the 1950s but they were BIG and Expensive. Integrated circuits were introduced for computers in the 60s. But how much processing power could you get for $100,000 in 1980? That is what a VAX 11/780 mini-computer from Digital Equipment Corporation cost. It became a reference standard for computing performance known as a MIPS or sometimes VAX MIPS for Million Instructions Per Second. A million instructions sound like a lot but computers do things in very tiny steps and it takes a great number of steps to accomplish something significant. The Intel Atom processor running at 1.6 gigahertz runs 645 times as fast as that VAX with both running compiled C. But who would have considered giving a grade school kid exclusive use of a $100,000 computer in 1980?
The Mac from Apple changed the way people interacted with computers in 1984. Computers were hit with the GUI that year, Graphical User Interface. The trouble with GUIs is that they require more processing power from the computer than the crude Command Line Interface but the advantage is supposed to be computers that are easier for people to learn and use. Since processing power has soared since 1984 that disadvantage should hardly matter.
So could netbooks be the "sweet spot" for computer technology? They have a low price, significant processing power for the price, light weight, small size and wireless network access. That can extend to the internet or not. Does this make them the perfect devices for school kids? We constantly hear these huge numbers for the sizes of disk drives, 100 gigabytes, 500 gigabytes and TERABYTES. How many people understand what those numbers really mean? A 500 page paperback book has about 2,000 letters and spaces on each page. So one book that size is a MEGABYTE. So that means a 100 gigabyte drive can hold ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND BOOKS. A 500 gigabyte drive can hold 500,000 books. A terabyte drive could hold ONE MILLION BOOKS. How many books are there in the Library of Congress?
There are 21,218,408 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system. Though some books are more than a megabyte many are less than that so 21 disk drives could hold the entire Library of Congress. That would cost less than $10,000.
How many books does a good grade school or high school need in its library? But if that library is in electronic form and all of the kids in the school have wireless netbooks then they can download anything anytime and physical books don't need to be moved around and lost or returned to shelves. So why do the kids need printed textbooks? Why are they walking around with these huge backpacks? We didn't do that when I was in grade school and we didn't even have NETBOOKS.