It’s almost June and a lot of people– fellow teachers and students– have asked me for recommendations regarding the best tools for the coming school year.
Netbooks. I always tell folks to get a netbook if they already have a desktop. They are excellent 2nd computers.
Smartphones. Unless you already have a Nokia Wireless Keyboard, Nokia’s E-Series QWERTY Smartphones are very good alternatives to netbooks. I still believe that the E61i is an excellent choice as well as the E63. Mobilepakistan.wordpress.com has an excellent article on how the E61i “outperforms” a laptop. If you can afford an E71, you can afford a low-end netbook.
Among the N-Series, the N-95 remains, for me, the top of the line. It might not have the Xenon flash of the N-82, but the N-95 started the “desktop to laptop to pocket computing” trend that the forthcoming N-97 is riding on. As an over-all device, even the newer N-85 and N-96 fall short of the N-95. If you shop around, you can get an N-95 brand new or used at very nice prices.
