I liked everything about Dell's Latitude 2100 netbook--I think it's designed pretty smartly for its target K-12 audience--except for the price. It's $370, which is a bit high for an education netbook, no?

It's "student-rugged," meaning it doesn't meet any kind of ruggedized specification, but it'll take more of a beating than a regular notebook, with a body that's rubberized all the way around, and an optional anti-microbial keyboard for fighting off swine flu and other foul organisms that thrive on the primordial ooze perpetually coating children's nasty hands.

One thing the kids won't like is a network activity light built into the top lid, so there's no covert web browsing, unless the teacher's blind. But there are five different colors and accessories like shoulder straps to make it easy to lug around. The guts are standard fare for a netbook--Atom N270, yadda yadda.

The reason it's got the Latitude name is that it can be remotely managed like enterprise notebooks--and there's a Mobile Computing Station that'll dock 24 of them using a single ethernet cable and power cord, obviously designed for the classroom.

I like the idea of classrooms filled with these--or any netbook really--and there's a lot of thoughtful stuff going on here, but $369 before any of the add-ons just feels like maybe too much. There's probably a discount for buying in bulk that might make it more reasonable, but it's a high ceiling to come down from, given the booger-filled target market, it seems. Though obviously way cheaper than giving a full-sized laptop, for sure.

What is the magic price to give every student in every classroom a computer?