Last month Richard Taylor was invited to the launch of the new Dell Latitude 2100 for schools. In this month’s Executive Soapbox he describes his experience and the lessons for education suppliers.

Notebook computers for schools are not new, but Dell has decided to enter the fray with the launch of the Dell Latitude 2100.

Unusually for an education product, Latitude 2100 was launched simultaneously around the world, with the UK event at Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith.

As with most launch events, there were the obligatory educational journalists, who were outnumbered by the people from Dell and its agency. We were shown the product and even got to see a room full of students using the notebooks, but we could not speak to any of them because of privacy concerns. This seemed odd, as the school had invited us.

If these ‘dog and pony shows’ are to be more than a glorified spiel, then you really do need to speak with students to see how they use the technology and to ask what they think of it. Apparently the school does this for itself (and presumably Dell and other vendors) but thought it best if we journalists were kept in the dark.

So all that I can sensibly tell you about the new 2100 is that it isn't the smallest, cheapest or possibly the best notebook for the school market. It does come with an anti-microbial keyboard, but alas only in the USA. This would have been an interesting point of difference, far more so that the light on the lid which glows when a student is connected. How an illuminated piece of plastic advances a student’s learning prospects is unclear, but apparently this is a ‘feature’ that had been designed in partnership with teachers, so that they could at least see the computer was connected to a network. Far more impressive was the touch-screen facility, or it might have been if we had seen a student using it on the day (we didn’t).

In the end the 2100 may be a great choice for schools, but without the US anti-microbial keyboard, I doubt even the touch-screen will set the schools IT market on fire, in the way that the ASUS MiniBook did last year for example. To be fair to Dell, it has tried hard and has obviously been working strategically with Sacred Heart, implementing Dell Unified Communications, a suite of apps which allows the students to stay in touch with lessons from home.

Perhaps the most interesting things to be gleaned on the day were not about Dell’s new 2100 nor other products, but about the thinking of Sacred Heart’s senior leadership team in relation to issues such as Diplomas, academies, assessment, the benefits (or otherwise) of Becta – the real meat and bones of education and IT.

If Dell wants to wrest back its number two spot in education (in Europe) from Apple, it should focus on these areas, and the ‘benefits of Dell solutions’, rather than focusing on the individual features of products like the 2100, no matter how good they may be individually.

Richard can be contacted at richard.taylor@meissa-limited.com

Copyright Meissa Limited (UK) 2010