Did you see the photos of the future ASUS Eee PC T101H that came out of CES? It's similar to the Classmate in that will use an Intel Atom processor, yet the industrial design is not specifically for kids.
A few comments that may help:
1) Schools with volume license agreements have the option of using Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or Windows Vista to get Tablet & Touch technology on any of these mini-notebooks / netbooks, like the Classmate PC. You'll want to work with your OEM for drivers.
2) The Toshiba Portege M750 has a dual EM / resistive touch digitizer. It auto switches between the two, so when a pen is in range you don't get funny lines going across the screen and when no pen is detected you can touch the screen with your finger.
This is different from resistive digitizers only, which have a lower sampling rate and writing appears a bit more jaggy.
3) Mini-netbooks also known as netbooks (just means it has an Intel Atom processor), are low performance PCs relative to something like the Toshiba Portege M750 (Intel Core 2 Duo processor) . If you're willing to compromise performance for weight (a good tradeoff for some people), then you might want to look that route. But if it's your primary PC, you might want to stay with the Portege line. If you want to shave a pound off, Lenovo x200 is another to consider.
A few comments that may help:
1) Schools with volume license agreements have the option of using Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or Windows Vista to get Tablet & Touch technology on any of these mini-notebooks / netbooks, like the Classmate PC. You'll want to work with your OEM for drivers.
2) The Toshiba Portege M750 has a dual EM / resistive touch digitizer. It auto switches between the two, so when a pen is in range you don't get funny lines going across the screen and when no pen is detected you can touch the screen with your finger.
This is different from resistive digitizers only, which have a lower sampling rate and writing appears a bit more jaggy.
3) Mini-netbooks also known as netbooks (just means it has an Intel Atom processor), are low performance PCs relative to something like the Toshiba Portege M750 (Intel Core 2 Duo processor) . If you're willing to compromise performance for weight (a good tradeoff for some people), then you might want to look that route. But if it's your primary PC, you might want to stay with the Portege line. If you want to shave a pound off, Lenovo x200 is another to consider.