I have just read that the NSW OLPC for schools system has approved Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbooks with Adobe Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver on them, as well as ‘free’ versions of Windows and Office.
I have to say that there are a few issues I can see here. Firstly free software from MS!? There is no such thing as free! Even if it is provided free, the cost is that MS will expect a return by pushing the user, and the school down the Windows route rather than Mac or Linux. Not that good for a department of education to get suckered into that one!
Second issue is Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver running on a netbook with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics card on a 10″ 1025×576 screen![b] You have to be kidding me![/b] Maybe you could get them to load up, but do any work! Checking Adobes website for PS CS4 they require a 1.8GHz or faster processor and a 1024×768 screen, Flash recommends a bigger screen and Dreamweaver requires a 1280×800 screen. Obviously these netbooks don’t meet this requirement.
This is not good for Adobe or the students. The students will get frustrated with the UI and slow or none existent performance and Adobe will lose customers as they will think their software is buggy. Oh, and I should add that we will pay for this too.