My niece got a laptop last year from her school. When we first learned of it, I was thrilled, but frankly apprehensive as to the benefit.

My suspicions were confirmed when I found that when she received the laptop, there was nothing really on it, other than Encarta and the Microsoft Office of the time. Which means now in addition to the 7 or 8 books plus notebooks she has to carry to school, she now has to add a 5lb laptop to the mix.

Not to mention the fact that probably 40% of the teaching staff are not well versed in using the computer, so she probably knows more about it that they do.

It seems to me that with the power of the computer, you could at least condense all of her text books into PDF form, or perhaps a more flexible type of web interface, so that she could go through her reading on the computer.

The school spend 1.2 million dollars to give her a word processor. Our school systems seem to be so behind the times, that I doubt they will ever catch up.