Hello folks!
I coach an FTC team in Oregon. I got a couple of grants, and next year I am going to have two robot teams going. Right now, the team is using my classroom computer to do the programming. Next year, I'd like to get two individual laptops for the students to program on. I am eyeing netbooks because they are both small and fairly cheap. If we want them for not uch more than programming, is that a wise choice?
Any other advice to offer?
Thanks!

Hiya Coach,

Netbooks have really small screens which is not very handy for programming at all. They are also quite slow. A low end normal laptop would be preferable and a resolution of at least 1024x768 would be recommended. The bigger the screem the better it will be for programming.

- Xander

Find some old P4 laptops (preferable thinkpads) with XP or Win2K already installed at a PC dealer repair shop or flea market.

Go for Pentium 4 laptops. The netbooks are not powerful enough to perform well in processing speeds. P4 will be a cheap and much more powerful processing option .